Ukraine has recovered the bodies of 19 people killed in Russian captivity, Oleh Kotenko, the commissioner for persons missing in special circumstances, said at a roundtable discussion "Five years of the law on the legal status of missing persons: is there any progress?".
"I would like to give such unfortunate examples, when a person is in captivity, interrogated - we can see it. I brought 19 bodies – they died in captivity. I will bring four more in the coming days. These are those who were in captivity, they died there," Kotenko said.
He added that "this is about what we know, these bodies are being returned to us."
"But there is a possibility that the bodies may not be returned to us," the commissioner said.
Kotenko stressed that there is currently no information about nearly 7,000 missing persons. More than 300 people who have disappeared since 2014 are also being searched for.
The Unified Register of Missing Persons, which was launched in May, contains information about more than 24,000 people. More than 8,000 have been found, of whom 60% are alive and are or have been in captivity.
Last month, President Zelenskyy said that 2,526 Ukrainians had been returned from Russian captivity since 24 February 2022.