Thousands of families have been separated in the chaos of the fighting in Ukraine. Power cuts and disruption to internet and mobile phone services mean many have gone weeks without hearing news from loved ones in areas hit by heavy Russian bombardment.
Sergey was taking refuge with his family in a bomb shelter when he left to look for food. The fierce fighting meant he couldn’t get back to them, and the next day his phone went dead.
Desperate for news, his brother Vladimir turned to a Telegram group set up by a Ukrainian TV presenter who shares information about missing people.
The group, called Search for the Missing, has grown to more than 80,000 members since it launched earlier this month and receives thousands of requests for help every day.
Hours after posting about his brother, and four days after Sergey’s disappearance, Vladimir received a phone call from Sergey’s wife’s family in kyiv, who had seen the post. “At the end of the day, they called me to say that my brother had come to them,” Vladimir said.
Sergey had reached another shelter, but without food or water, he and the people he was with decided to surrender to the Russian troops. “They took a white flag and went to the Russians. After a search, they were released. Then, with the help of volunteers, they drove to kyiv,” says Vladimir.
The rest of Sergey’s family eventually made it out of Bucha to safety in Gdansk, Poland. “I experienced feelings that I had never experienced in my life,” says Vladimir. “It was very welcome news in these difficult days.” Sergey has since returned to Ukraine to join the army, he says.
The search for the missing was started by Katya Osadcha, a former model, journalist, and popular reality TV host. She was desperate to help when the war started, but she felt that she “couldn’t shoot or be a soldier” because she has two young children.
Instead, she asked her friends on Instagram for help, and now she and 15 volunteers run the group 24 hours a day, reviewing every post for details and filtering out duplicates.
‘overwhelmed’
Katya says they’ve helped some 300 people find their missing relatives, each with a happy update: a flurry of red hearts, praying and crying emojis, amid the channel’s endless stream of desperate pleas for information.
“You get photos of happy people on vacation, and their friends and family write to us saying they’re missing and the last call was five days ago from a shelter, and there’s been a lot of bombing.”
Emma Shymanovych, who helps run the channel, says the small team of volunteers has been overwhelmed: “It’s extremely painful to read queries about missing children or about children looking for their parents. It’s hard to express how we feel.”
Yulia, 25, left her mother, brother and sister behind when she fled the city of Mariupol with her husband and two-month-old baby: “The last time I spoke to them they had no electricity, water, heating or communications” . For several days.”
When she couldn’t reach them, Yulia contacted local authorities and friends who might still be in town to see if they knew anything, but got nowhere and posted on the Telegram channel.
“I push the worst thoughts away from me,” he said. “I really hope they’re safe and they just don’t have a connection. I just hope for an immediate ceasefire.” Not long after we spoke, Yulia texted me to say that her mother had finally been able to contact her, but that she was still in Mariupol. “She spoke for only a minute. Thank God!”
Iryna posted a photo of her friend’s 23-year-old daughter Julia after she disappeared in kyiv. “Her mother cried for her constantly,” she says. She tried asking for news on Facebook and other Telegram channels, eventually turning to Find the Missing.
“Within 24 hours I started getting responses from people who knew her. Some said they didn’t know anything, but then their friends got in touch and said Julia had broken her phone and hadn’t been able to get through.”
Julia had dropped her phone while running to a bomb shelter and hadn’t memorized her mother’s phone number.
Thousands more remain trapped in Mariupol. Olga, who lives in Istanbul, posted on the channel after losing contact with her daughter Daria, 31, and her two grandchildren, Mark, 4, and Lydia, 5, who live there.
Olga last heard from her daughter on February 28. In a text message, Daria wrote that a shell had hit her apartment building and that there was no power or heat. “I don’t know what to do at all,” the message read. “I am scared. The children are dressed, there are a lot of blankets. Mariupol is surrounded by the enemy. We have a very bad connection.”
Olga has almost given up hope of hearing from them. Monday was her daughter’s birthday. “I am afraid of everything and I never thought my family would be affected by the war,” she says.
Olga, from Bakhmut, joined the group to try to find news of her daughter, Alice, and eight-month-old grandson, Timofey, in Mariupol. The last she heard from them was that they were taking refuge with neighbors in the basement of a supermarket without electricity, water or heating.
Since then, he has received a message that the building they were hiding in was bombed and is anxiously awaiting further news. “If they are alive and where they are now, I don’t know.”
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