Russians seek answers over hundreds missing after Ukraine's 2024 incursion — SkimNews
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- The Kursk regional governor says more than 300 Russians remain missing after Ukraine's August 2024 incursion, which saw Ukrainian forces overrun more than 777 sq km (300 sq miles) of Russian territory within six days.
- Russia's human rights commissioner published a list of 517 Kursk residents reported missing in early 2025, but families said it mixed up the names of those missing with those searching for them — "the height of incompetence," one young woman said.
- Nearly 200 Russians sent a letter to President Putin, President Zelensky, and the United Nations requesting a humanitarian corridor to evacuate civilians from captured settlements; the corridor never materialized, Russian authorities estimate 2,000 people remained.
- Lyubov identified her mother's body in a Kursk mortuary in October after her April death from a head injury in Darino; a DNA sample she had provided in January was reportedly lost, leaving the body unidentified for months.
- Russian state TV told viewers during the incursion that "everything is under control: two or three days, and it'll be just as it was before," according to Lyubov, who blames the propaganda for her mother's refusal to evacuate.
- Ukraine's Territorial Defence Forces and Ukraine's human rights commissioner said all civilians they evacuated from Kursk region were handed over to Russia; the Kursk governor, Russia's human rights commissioner, and the Russian Red Cross did not respond to the BBC.
Why it matters: The story exposes how the Russian state's failure to evacuate Kursk residents — compounded by a botched missing persons list, lost DNA samples, and unanswered appeals to the Red Cross — left families to conduct their own searches, with bodies sitting unidentified in mortuaries for months. The governor's figure of 300+ missing, contradicted by no official audit, underscores how official channels failed the civilians caught in the incursion zone.
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