Architecture of Closed Diplomacy: Mechanisms for Facilitating the Release of Detainees Through Dialogue Between Non-Governmental Actors, States, and Other Parties Involved

Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished colleagues,

allow me to begin with the story of one person.

One evening in 2023, Pavel Zh., a serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, called his brother before deploying to positions in the Serebrianskyi Forest near Kreminna. It was their last conversation. After his unit deployed to its positions, contact with Pavel Zh. was lost, although for some time his phone continued to leave a digital trace: according to the family, the device’s location was recorded in a settlement then under the control of Russian forces. That signal subsequently disappeared as well.

In the years since, the family has received no information that would make it possible to establish Pavel’s fate with certainty. His death has not been confirmed; nor has there been official confirmation that he is being held in captivity. His fate remains in that realm of uncertainty described in official records as “missing,” while for his relatives it comes down to a far simpler and more painful question: is he alive, and where is he?

Pavel’s father is a retired career officer and military physician who served in the armed forces for more than thirty years. For most of his life, military service was his profession. He now awaits an answer about the fate of his own son from the system of which he himself was a part for decades.

I begin with this story precisely because cases of this kind matter not only in their human dimension. They help explain why statistics on persons missing during wartime are considerably more complex than the figures may initially suggest. In May 2024, Global Citizens drew attention to data indicating that approximately 37,000 Ukrainians — military personnel and civilians — were missing. More than two years later, that figure can no longer serve as a reliable description of the current scale of the problem. Not only have the figures themselves changed; equally important, so has our understanding of how different the categories of people combined within the overall statistics actually are.

First and foremost, military personnel missing in the course of hostilities must be distinguished from civilians detained in occupied territories or transferred to Russia. For families, uncertainty is the starting point in both cases. From the standpoint of international law, government records, and mechanisms for return, however, these are two different problems.

Distinguished colleagues, allow me first to address the situation of military personnel.

The status of a missing servicemember, by itself, tells us almost nothing about that person’s actual fate. A person may have been killed, while the body has yet to be recovered or identified. A servicemember may have become separated from his unit. Finally, a servicemember may have been captured, while information about that fact does not always reach the Ukrainian side or the International Committee of the Red Cross promptly.

In August 2026, Ukraine secured the return of ten members of the Armed Forces and National Guard who had been listed as missing until the time of their return. Two had been sought since 2024 and the remaining eight since 2025.

This episode, of course, does not in itself permit conclusions about the fate of the entire population of missing military personnel based on the experience of these ten individuals. It does, however, confirm a fundamentally important point: the absence of confirmed prisoner-of-war status does not mean that a person is not in captivity.

This is precisely where the most painful area of uncertainty arises for relatives. As long as there is no information confirming death and, at the same time, no confirmation of captivity, families are compelled to follow prisoner exchanges, examine photographs of those released, seek testimony from former prisoners of war, and verify any information that might, even indirectly, shed light on a person’s fate.

As of September 18, 2026, Ukraine reported that 8,823 military personnel had been returned from captivity. By that date, a total of 9,726 adult Ukrainians had returned home, including 903 civilians.

A returned prisoner of war and a missing servicemember, however, belong to different statistical categories. In the first case, the fact of captivity has been established. In the second, the principal question remains determining the person’s fate.

Once status has been confirmed, the situation becomes considerably clearer. During the exchange of June 5, 2026, for example, all 186 returning Ukrainian servicemembers had, according to the Ukrainian Ombudsman, been officially confirmed by the International Committee of the Red Cross as prisoners of war.

Pavel’s case remains at an earlier stage. His family has information concerning the circumstances of his disappearance and the subsequent geolocation of his phone, but those facts are insufficient to establish that he is or was in captivity.

Statistics on missing military personnel therefore cannot automatically be treated as statistics on prisoners of war. It would be equally mistaken, however, to assume that the two populations do not overlap.

Allow me now to turn to another category — civilians. Here, uncertainty arises under different circumstances and, in many respects, becomes even more complex.

The situation for civilians is different.

In February 2025, The Washington Post reported the story of a Ukrainian man named Vlad and his wife, Nadezhda Yevdokimova. Russian servicemen detained Vlad at a checkpoint in northeastern Ukraine. For several months thereafter, his wife had no reliable information about her husband’s whereabouts.

The first confirmation came neither from a government authority nor through an official notification procedure. Nadezhda received a call from a Russian number. Her name and telephone number had been written on a small piece of paper that was secretly carried out of a cell inside a spool of thread. That was how the family learned that Vlad was alive and being held in a Russian prison. Information later emerged about his transfers between penitentiary facilities.

What matters most in this story is not the unusual detail of the note, but the manner in which the information was obtained. A person was in fact within the penitentiary system while, for a prolonged period, his family had no official confirmation even of his whereabouts.

Cases of this kind make statistics concerning civilian detention particularly unreliable.

A prisoner of war has a specific status established under international humanitarian law. The legal position of a detained civilian is different. Some civilians are subject to criminal prosecution; others remain uncharged for extended periods; still others are initially held in unofficial places of detention. Human rights defenders and journalists have documented cases in which people were transferred between occupied territories and facilities within Russia, sometimes without sustained contact with their relatives.

The Washington Post wrote about a category of people whom activists searching for them described as “frozen”: the person is in custody, but his or her legal position remains uncertain, while the family has virtually no ability to establish that status through ordinary government procedures.

This illustrates the fundamental difference from Pavel’s story. In the case of a missing servicemember, it is unknown whether capture occurred. In the case of some civilian detainees, detention has already taken place, but uncertainty arises within the detention system itself.

There is another fundamental difference as well — the mechanisms for return.

For a servicemember who has acquired prisoner-of-war status, there is a clearly defined category under international law and an established practice of exchanges. The parties compile lists, verification takes place, and agreements are then reached on specific exchange operations.

No comparable mechanism exists for civilians.

In July 2026, the European External Action Service explicitly noted that, unlike prisoners of war, civilian detainees are not covered by an international exchange mechanism under the Geneva Conventions. It is precisely for this reason that the EU links their return to diplomatic pressure, international coordination, and case-specific efforts.

The legal logic here is fundamentally different. International law does not provide for the detention of a civilian for the purpose of a subsequent exchange. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights emphasizes that civilians must be released as soon as the lawful grounds for their detention cease to exist.

The practice of war, however, has proved considerably more complex than the legal framework.

Civilians have indeed been returned as part of operations conducted simultaneously with prisoner-of-war exchanges. According to the United Nations, during exchanges in May and August 2025, Russia transferred 179 civilian detainees to Ukraine.

Nevertheless, this did not develop into an established procedure comparable to exchanges of military personnel.

In July 2026, the EU and Ukraine separately made the issue of civilian detainees a matter of foreign-policy coordination and called for the immediate, safe, and unconditional return of arbitrarily detained Ukrainian civilians.

The statistics on returns clearly illustrate the scale of the difference. By September 18, Ukraine reported the return of 8,823 prisoners of war and only 903 civilians. These figures cannot be compared directly as measures of the effectiveness of two analogous mechanisms: the legal grounds and detention regimes differ. The disparity itself, however, helps explain why the civilian issue remains a separate and considerably more complex problem.

In civilian cases, moreover, there is often an additional preliminary stage: before seeking a person’s release, it is necessary to establish that the person is in fact being detained.

Accordingly, where the whereabouts of a civilian detainee have not been established, two successive tasks arise: first, the person must be found and the fact of detention confirmed; only then can efforts be made to secure the person’s return.

And it is precisely here that we come directly to the question of closed diplomacy. Where there is no universal international mechanism capable of automatically converting the established fact of a person’s detention into a procedure for that person’s return, the space for direct and often non-public engagement becomes particularly important — among states, international institutions, intermediaries, representatives of civil society, and other parties capable of helping to establish the fate of a particular person and facilitate that person’s return.

Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, allow me now to turn directly to the figures, because differing interpretations of them frequently distort our understanding of the true scale of the problem.

By mid-2026, an estimate of approximately 16,000 Ukrainian civilians held by the Russian side had become established in official international discourse.

On July 15, the European External Action Service cited figures from the Ukrainian authorities: approximately 16,000 civilians were currently being held by Russia, many of them from occupied territories.

In August, a comparable estimate came from the United Nations. The Associated Press reported that, according to a United Nations estimate, more than 16,000 civilians detained by Russia during the war remained in detention; many were being held incommunicado.

This is an important figure, but one that can easily be misinterpreted.

It does not mean that there is an open and fully verified list of 16,000 names, with the place of detention of every individual known.

Civis Fortis, citing data from the Ukrainian Ombudsman, states that as of June 2026, 1,878 civilians held by Russia had been verified. Of these, 892 had been officially confirmed by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The difference between the 892 cases confirmed by the ICRC, the 1,878 verified cases, and the overall estimate of approximately 16,000 illustrates the central problem: each of these figures reflects a different degree of confirmation concerning the fate of specific individuals.

This estimate, too, should be treated with due caution.

Estimates by human rights defenders are considerably higher.

Civis Fortis cites various estimates by human rights defenders according to which between 16,000 and 30,000 civilians have been abducted in temporarily occupied territories. The organization itself emphasizes, however, that the exact number is unknown.

In May 2026, Le Monde likewise drew attention to the substantial gap between the figure used officially and estimates by human rights defenders. According to the French newspaper, organizations engaged in tracing and documenting cases of civilian captivity believe the actual number to be substantially higher than the official estimate of 16,000.

The formulation “tens of thousands,” however, has appeared not only within the Ukrainian human rights community. A U.S. Department of State report on conditions in 2023 noted that Ukrainian government institutions and civil society organizations estimated the total number of Ukrainian civilians detained by Russian forces to be in the tens of thousands.

The same report, citing Ukraine’s then Ministry of Reintegration, provided a more specific figure: by the end of September 2023, more than 25,000 civilians, along with 6,670 military personnel, were being held in various places of detention under the control of Russian forces or affiliated structures.

That figure cannot be mechanically compared with the current estimate of 16,000. The figures concern different dates, populations, and counting criteria. Some people were released; in other cases, status may have changed; and some information was subsequently clarified.

The history of these estimates nevertheless demonstrates that today’s figure of 16,000 cannot be regarded as an established upper limit.

Rather, it is one of the more cautious reference points within a system in which a substantial share of cases remains insufficiently verified.

Allow me to address separately another figure that periodically appears in public discussion and requires particular precision in its use.

There is also an even larger figure.

In a 2025 publication, the International Society for Human Rights stated that the fate of more than 50,000 civilians was unknown.

That figure is noticeably higher than the other estimates and therefore requires the most rigorous scrutiny.

The same ISHR publication refers to 10,291 people whose whereabouts had been established. That figure corresponds to official Ukrainian statistics from early February 2025: at that time, the National Information Bureau reported 62,948 persons being sought, with the whereabouts of 10,291 having been established or the bodies of deceased persons identified.

The official Ukrainian source specifically emphasized, however, that the figure of 62,948 represented the overall population, including both military personnel and civilians.

The arithmetic remainder therefore does indeed exceed 50,000, but it would be incorrect to describe that number as the number of missing civilians, much less as the number of civilians held in Russian prisons.

This is an instructive example of how the same statistical data can change meaning as they pass from one document to another.

The figure may therefore indicate the scale of the problem of unresolved fates, but there is no basis for treating it as a reliably established number of civilians in detention.

At present, the more reliable picture is as follows: approximately 16,000 is the current estimate of the Ukrainian authorities cited by the European External Action Service; the United Nations provides a comparable estimate; 16,000–30,000 is the range cited by some human rights organizations; and “tens of thousands” is a broader estimate found both in human rights materials and in an earlier U.S. Department of State report.

One further clarification is necessary here, without which any comparison of these figures would be misleading.

There is another figure, substantially larger than all those mentioned above.

At the end of August 2026, 274,000 people were still registered as missing in the International Committee of the Red Cross’s Central Tracing Agency in connection with the Russia–Ukraine international armed conflict. By that time, the ICRC had conducted approximately 814,000 contacts with families, while 18,300 families had received information about the fate or whereabouts of their relatives.

But 274,000 is not the number of Ukrainians in Russian prisons, nor is it the number of Ukrainian prisoners of war.

The ICRC’s Central Tracing Agency works with military personnel and civilians from both sides who have lost contact with their families or have fallen into the hands of the adverse party. The organization acts as a neutral intermediary, collecting and transmitting information to Russia and Ukraine.

Similar confusion also arises around Ukraine’s Unified Register of Persons Missing in Special Circumstances: it, too, includes both military personnel and civilians.

The figures 274,000, 30,000, 16,000, and 8,823 therefore cannot be added together, subtracted from one another, or presented as successive stages of a single statistical series.

They answer different questions.

274,000 is the number of people who remain missing within the ICRC tracing system.

Approximately 16,000 is the current estimate of the number of Ukrainian civilians held by Russia.

8,823 is the number of Ukrainian military personnel returned from captivity as of September 18, 2026.

At the same time, the number of people for whom the available information remains incomplete and does not permit an unambiguous determination of status is unknown.

It is precisely here that the experiences of military personnel and civilians intersect in practice, although they remain legally and statistically distinct. A servicemember may be listed as missing and later be found in captivity. A civilian may be held in a penitentiary facility while the family continues to search for that person as missing.

Distinguished colleagues, behind these statistical distinctions lies another problem directly relevant to the subject of our discussion today — the closed nature of the system itself.

The difficulty of establishing accurate numbers is directly related to the opacity of the detention system.

The United Nations has documented arbitrary detention of Ukrainian civilians, incommunicado detention, torture, and ill-treatment. In August 2026, at an informal Arria-formula meeting involving members of the United Nations Security Council, UN representatives again reported such violations involving civilian detainees and prisoners of war. The Russian side rejected the allegations, describing the discussion as part of a disinformation campaign.

In July, the European Union imposed sanctions on Russian officials and one entity; according to the EU’s assessment, those officials and the entity were responsible for serious violations of the rights of Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilian detainees in Russia and in occupied territories.

A separate problem is access to places of detention and confirmation that a person is in fact being held in a particular facility.

The dispute over the number of detainees is therefore not merely a statistical question. The less transparent the system, the wider the gap between the actual number of people held within it and the number whose whereabouts can be confirmed from outside.

This opacity defines one of the central tasks of closed diplomacy. Before one can speak about securing a person’s release, it is often necessary first to obtain confirmation that the person is in fact being held in a particular place. Efforts to establish a person’s fate frequently precede negotiations over return. A public result, in turn, is often preceded by prolonged non-public communication.

Closed diplomacy in this context is not an alternative to international law and should not substitute for state mechanisms. Its potential role arises where formal procedures prove insufficient to resolve a specific humanitarian issue and where maintaining a channel of communication can help obtain information, confirm status, or facilitate a person’s return.

For non-governmental actors, this distinction is especially important. They do not possess the authority of a state, cannot make decisions on release, and should not create the illusion that they possess such powers. Their potential function is different: to establish and preserve communication, transmit verifiable information, facilitate the development of acceptable solutions through mediation, and maintain dialogue with those state and other parties involved whose decisions in practice determine the fate of a particular person.

For precisely this reason, effective work in this field is not always compatible with publicity. A negotiating channel may continue to exist only for as long as the parties are confident that the fact of contact itself, interim proposals, and conditions under discussion will not become instruments of public pressure before a result has been achieved. In humanitarian matters, confidentiality can, under certain circumstances, become not a means of concealing activity but one of the conditions necessary to preserve the very possibility of dialogue.

Confidentiality, however, must not mean the absence of principles. On the contrary, the less a process is open to external scrutiny, the clearer its boundaries must remain: the humanitarian nature of the objective, the reliability of information transmitted, the inadmissibility of bargaining over a human fate, and the understanding that the ultimate criterion is not the public visibility of such work but a concrete result for a specific person.

In conclusion, allow me to return to the two human stories that have accompanied our discussion today.

Pavel’s story begins on the front line.

He is a servicemember. The last conversation known to his family took place before he deployed to positions in the Serebrianskyi Forest. After his disappearance, according to his relatives, his phone was for some time located in a settlement under Russian control.

This information makes it possible to consider several possibilities, including the possibility that he was captured. None, however, has yet been confirmed.

Vlad’s story begins differently.

He is a civilian. He was detained and subsequently entered the Russian prison system. His family, however, had to establish his whereabouts through an unofficial channel — a message carried out of his cell.

Legally, these cases cannot be placed in the same category. Pavel is a servicemember whose fate has not been established. Vlad is a civilian whose detention was ultimately confirmed.

The mechanisms through which they might be returned are also different.

From the perspective of the family, however, there is an obvious similarity between these categories. State systems operate with statuses: “missing,” “prisoner of war,” “civilian detainee,” “verified,” “confirmed by the ICRC.” The family is primarily trying to establish something else: whether the person is alive and where that person is.

When Global Citizens wrote about 37,000 missing persons in May 2024, a single aggregate figure could still create the impression that this was one problem. It is now clear that several different problems overlap.

Military personnel and civilians must be counted separately.

Missing servicemembers cannot automatically be classified as prisoners of war.

Civilian detainees cannot be included in prisoner-of-war statistics.

General registers of missing persons cannot be presented as the number of people held in Russian prisons.

At the same time, a person’s absence from a confirmed list does not mean that the person is not being held in a place of detention.

For Pavel’s father, a career officer and military physician who served in the armed forces for more than thirty years, all these statistical distinctions matter only insofar as one of these systems can ultimately provide him with an answer about his son’s fate.

Vlad’s family received such an answer — initially through a scrap of paper carried out of a prison. It did not yet mean that he was coming home, but it at least brought one form of uncertainty to an end.

For Pavel’s family, that uncertainty remains.

Ultimately, it is this — rather than the largest of the published figures — that defines the scale of the problem: how many people still remain between registers, statuses, and places of detention while their families continue to wait for an answer to the simplest question — where are they?

For our discussion today, this question has another dimension as well. In every such case, a channel must be found through which information can pass from one side to another. Sometimes that channel is state diplomacy. Sometimes it is an international organization. Sometimes it is an intermediary, a journalist, a human rights defender, a representative of civil society, or a non-governmental organization capable of maintaining dialogue with those who do not speak to one another in public.

The architecture of closed diplomacy is built precisely from such channels. It cannot guarantee an outcome, and those who participate in it must not promise what they have no authority to deliver. But it can preserve a space for dialogue where the absence of dialogue leaves a person merely as a number in one of several registers that do not correspond with one another.

I would therefore suggest assessing such work not by the degree of its public visibility, but by a far more practical criterion: whether the existing channel makes it possible to establish a person’s fate, confirm the person’s whereabouts, transmit the necessary information to those capable of making a decision, and ultimately bring that person’s return closer.

In this field, publicity is not always a measure of effectiveness. Sometimes the most consequential work begins precisely where statements to the press end and the possibility of direct conversation emerges — calm, professional, confidential, and focused on a specific humanitarian outcome.

And if such a conversation enables even one family to receive an answer to a question that has remained unanswered for years, then that channel serves a purpose.

Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attention.

Note

This text constitutes the public version of the address.

Certain information and portions of the address and subsequent discussion have not been included in the published text. Their disclosure could affect the interests of specific individuals, create risks to their safety, and compromise the confidentiality of communications relating to the humanitarian issues under consideration.

For this reason, the content of those portions is neither disclosed nor specified. Their omission from this publication is a deliberate limitation of the public version and does not alter the overall substance or principal conclusions of the address.

Sources and Reference Materials for the Address

Military Personnel and Prisoners of War

Office of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights — return of ten servicemembers previously listed as missing, August 25, 2026.

https://ombudsman.gov.ua/news_details/10-nashih-zahisnikiv-povernulisya-dodomu-u-den-nezalezhnosti

Office of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights — 9,726 adult Ukrainians returned, including 8,823 prisoners of war and 903 civilians, September 18, 2026.

https://www.ombudsman.gov.ua/en/news_details/pidtrimka-ssha-ta-vsogo-svitu-potribna-shchob-povernuti-ukrayinciv-dodomu

Office of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights — 186 servicemembers returned on June 5, 2026, and confirmed by the ICRC as prisoners of war.

https://www.ombudsman.gov.ua/news_details/75-j-obmin-polonenimi-186-ukrayinciv-povernulisya-dodomu

Civilian Detainees

European External Action Service — approximately 16,000 Ukrainian civilians held by Russia; absence of an international exchange mechanism for them comparable to prisoner-of-war exchanges, July 15, 2026.

https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/eu-steps-coordination-strengthen-international-action-ukrainian-civilian-detainees_en

Associated Press / United Nations — more than 16,000 civilians continue to be held by Russia, August 2026.

https://apnews.com/article/6687451c1d1170e57ac2db32695e3d61

Civis Fortis — 1,878 verified civilians, 892 confirmed by the ICRC; human rights estimates of the total number range from 16,000 to 30,000, August 31, 2026.

https://civisfortis.org.ua/en/publications/if-russia-returns-all-civilian-captives-tomorrow-ukraines-support-system-would-collapse-civis-fortis-study/

Le Monde — investigation into the scale of civilian detention and the incompleteness of official statistics, May 2026.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/05/18/captured-imprisoned-and-tortured-russia-ignores-all-laws-and-does-whatever-it-wants-to-ukrainian-civilians_6753550_4.html

The Washington Post — investigation into Ukrainian civilians in the Russian penitentiary system and the story of Vlad and Nadezhda Yevdokimova, February 2025.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/02/09/russia-ukraine-prisons-civilians-frozen/

Return of Civilians and International Law

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights — report on the treatment of civilians deprived of their liberty; 179 civilians returned as part of exchange operations in May and August 2025.

https://ukraine.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/2025-10/2025-09-22%20Treatment%20of%20civilians_ENG.pdf

Council of the European Union / Ukraine — joint statement on civilian detainees, July 13, 2026.

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2026/07/13/joint-statement-by-the-high-representative-on-behalf-of-the-european-union-and-by-ukraine-on-civilian-detainees-and-the-humanitarian-consequences-of-russia-s-war-of-aggression/

Earlier and Contested Estimates

U.S. Department of State — 2023 Country Report on Human Rights Practices: Ukrainian government and civil society sources estimated the number of detained civilians in the tens of thousands; more than 25,000 civilians appeared in Ukrainian government figures as of the end of September 2023.

https://2021-2025.state.gov/reports/2023-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/ukraine/russia-occupied-areas/

International Society for Human Rights — publication stating that the fate of more than 50,000 civilians was unknown.

https://ishr.org/ukraine-the-horror-in-my-house/

National Information Bureau of Ukraine — 62,948 persons being sought as of February 4, 2025; the figure includes military personnel and civilians.

https://nib.gov.ua/news/majzhe-63-tisyachi-lyudej-v-ukraini-vvazhayutsya-zniklimi-bezvisti/

International Tracing of Missing Persons

International Committee of the Red Cross — 274,000 people were listed as missing in the Central Tracing Agency system as of the end of August 2026; the system covers military personnel and civilians.

https://www.icrc.org/en/document/central-tracing-agency-missing-persons-ukraine

Additional Sources

Global Citizens — original publication of May 5, 2024.

https://gcim.eu/ru/05/05/2024/169022/

Council of the European Union — Human rights violations against Ukrainian prisoners of war: Council lists 15 individuals and one entity, July 13, 2026.

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2026/07/13/human-rights-violations-against-ukrainian-prisoners-of-war-council-lists-15-individuals-and-one-entity/