By Olivia Le Poidevin
GENEVA (Reuters) -The number of people missing in the war between Ukraine and Russia has doubled to 50,000 over the past year, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday.
“Last year, the number of missing persons that the ICRC has documented was 23,000. A year later that number has more than doubled; the ICRC has documented around 50,000 cases of missing persons,” said Dusan Vujasanin, head of the ICRC’s Central Tracing Agency Bureau for the conflict.
About 90% of those missing were servicemen and women, he said. ICRC did not provide a breakdown of missing persons by nationality.
Since March 2022 at the outbreak of the war, the ICRC has coordinated a search for missing people through its Central Tracing Agency Bureau, where both Russia and Ukraine share information with the international organisation.
The organization attributed the “exponential increase” in reported missing persons – from an average of 1,000 to 5,000 per month – to an intensifying conflict and improved reporting mechanisms, such as online documentation for families.
The ICRC disclosed for the first time that it had received 16,000 notifications from Ukraine and Russia about missing people being held by each side since 2022.
U.S. President Donald Trump has promised a swift end to the Ukraine war. Trump, who took office on January 20, separately discussed the war on Wednesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and told U.S. officials to begin talks on ending the nearly three-year conflict.
((Reporting by Olivia Le PoidevinEditing by Ludwig Burger and Bernadette Baum))
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