Why Europe struggles to recognise Ukraine’s civilian hostages

Civilian hostages should not exist. Yet in Russia's war against Ukraine, they do. People are abducted, held incommunicado, tortured, transferred to Russia and sentenced on fabricated charges. What does not exist is a clear, accepted legal category to name and address this practice.

International humanitarian law prohibits hostage-taking, torture, enforced disappearance and unlawful transfer. Civilians cannot lawfully be seized and used as bargaining chips.

Yet the international community still lacks a clear roadmap for responding when a state systematically abducts non-combatants, imprisons them, stages sham trials and uses detention as a tool of occupation. There are established procedures for prisoners of war. Abducted Ukrainian children now have a distinct international political framework. Civilian detainees, however, continue to fall between categories.

This disconnect reminds me of stories Ukrainian servicemen tell about joint training with other countries. The textbook instructions for evacuating a wounded soldier can sound straightforward: drive up, place the casualty in a vehicle and leave. Ukrainian soldiers can only laugh. Under artillery fire, with drones watching the sky and every movement potentially fatal, the simple instruction ceases to work.

The same gap between rules and reality shapes the response to civilian hostages. On paper, the rule is clear: civilians must not be abducted, tortured or held as leverage. In reality, Russia does all three – systematically and on a vast scale. An international system built on the idea of rules is poorly equipped to confront a state that turns the appearance of legality into an instrument of terror.

For decades, liberal democracies have defined themselves as governed by law. It has never been perfect, but the underlying principle matters: detention requires a procedure; a trial requires a genuine case; an accusation requires evidence; punishment must follow due process.

In an authoritarian system, the same institutions can serve the opposite purpose. A court may not establish the truth, but instead formalise violence. An official record may conceal a crime rather than protect a person. A sentence may not conclude an investigation but advance an occupation policy.

This is where European understanding often breaks down. The facts are known: Ukrainian civilians are abducted, cut off from their families, tortured, moved between occupied territories and Russia, and charged with "espionage", "terrorism", "extremism" or "sabotage". What many European political and civic actors still struggle to grasp is why this happens and what a political response should look like.

If a person has been convicted of "espionage", even if everyone realises that the case has been fabricated, the European approach still applies a legal framework. There was a court. There is a criminal charge. There is a sentence. Should the response therefore focus on access to a lawyer, humane conditions and the prisoner's rights?

All of these safeguards matter, but they are not enough. The problem is not merely that Ukrainian civilians are being treated badly in Russian prisons. The problem is that they should not be in those prisons at all.

The international community also often struggles to understand the internal logic of occupation – not occupation as a change of flag above an administrative building, but as a system of control and intimidation. Russia does not abduct only those who have carried weapons. It seizes mayors, journalists, priests, activists, teachers, volunteers, relatives of Ukrainian service personnel, people who refused to collaborate and people who were simply visible in their communities.

Ukrainians require little explanation of this logic. Russian occupation punishes not only action but identity, loyalty, memory, language and refusal to submit. Being Ukrainian or Crimean Tatar under occupation can itself invite suspicion. In the Russian system, suspicion can quickly lead to torture, a basement cell, pre-trial detention, transfer to a penal colony and a sentence.

European legal culture, however, naturally looks for a rational explanation. Why this person? What did they do? Why were they convicted? What evidence was presented? Did they have contact with the Ukrainian military? Could they have passed on information?

These questions may be reasonable in a system governed by law. Under Russian occupation, they can lead into a trap. The decision to seize and hold Ukrainian civilians is not legal. It is political.

There is another difficulty: every abduction is a distinct human story. Each person has a biography, a family and their own path through occupation, a basement, a remand prison and perhaps a penal colony. We can see the recurring pattern; we understand that these are not isolated excesses but part of state policy. To an outside audience, however, the pattern often fragments into hundreds or thousands of individual cases.

It is telling that the EU imposes sanctions on individuals involved not in the crimes of abducting and detaining civilians, but specifically in the restriction of prisoners' rights. In November 2025, the EU imposed sanctions on ten individuals, including senior officials of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service in the Rostov Region. These officials worked in institutions where prisoners, including Ukrainians, were beaten, denied medical care, held in appalling conditions and forced to make confessions during interrogations. The Council of the EU also referred to deaths resulting from ill-treatment, in particular that of the Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchyna.

On 13 July 2026, the EU went further, sanctioning 15 individuals and one detention facility over serious abuses against Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilian detainees in occupied Ukraine and Russia. The list includes prison officials, the Taganrog remand prison where Roshchyna died, and an FSB officer implicated in the illegal detention and torture of civilians.

These measures matter. The latest package is a genuine step towards recognising that civilians are not merely incidental victims within the Russian prison system.

But the sanctions response still focuses largely on what happens after capture: torture, degrading treatment, denial of medical care and death in custody. Europe has yet to build a dedicated, comprehensive sanctions track against the entire chain that captures a civilian – from occupation officials and FSB operatives to investigators, prosecutors, judges, convoy officers, prison administrators and propagandists who publicly brand the victim a "terrorist". This requires a broader conclusion: Europe must recognise this not as a collection of prison abuses, but as a system of state hostage-taking.

This brings us to the central problem. Europe is not necessarily indifferent. Often the people we speak to are genuinely appalled. They ask: this is horrific, but what exactly can we do?

We heard the same question during the first years of our work on Ukrainian children deported by Russia. Officials and politicians, sometimes with tears in their eyes, asked for a quick solution. How could the children be returned? What could one parliamentarian, minister, government or international organisation do?

When we answered that the response required tougher sanctions, sustained support for Ukraine, political pressure, the identification of perpetrators, work with governments and persistent media attention, many found the answer too complicated and uncomfortable. They wanted a humanitarian button that could be pressed to bring the children home.

Today, European politicians themselves speak about deported Ukrainian children in political terms: pressure, sanctions, an international coalition, support for Ukraine, Russia's isolation and individual accountability.

Civilian hostages must be understood in the same way. There is no single mediator, exchange or humanitarian formula that will bring everyone home. Our task is therefore not to persuade everyone to feel sympathy. Sympathy already exists, but it is not a political instrument.

European governments and institutions should look at Russia's detention of Ukrainian civilians not as a humanitarian issue at the margins of the war, but as one of the central mechanisms of Russian occupation. It is not an issue to be addressed only after victory or left solely to future tribunals. It is an active system of violence operating today, and the response must be political today.

The EU needs a dedicated sanctions track addressing the abduction, enforced disappearance, unlawful detention and torture of Ukrainian civilians. It should target investigators, prosecutors, judges, prison officials, occupation administrators, FSB and Federal Penitentiary Service personnel, prison governors, medical staff who conceal torture, and propagandists who legitimise fabricated verdicts.

The fate of civilian hostages must also be raised at the highest political level as consistently as energy security, sanctions and negotiations. There can be no normalisation of relations with Russia, no easing of sanctions and no credible peace framework without a demand that Russia release the Ukrainian civilians it has unlawfully detained and disclose the fate of those who remain missing.

Europe does not simply need to speak more often about Ukrainian civilians in Russian captivity. It needs to name the system for what it is: a state policy of abduction and hostage-taking – and act accordingly.

Anastasiia Marushevska, co-founder and executive director of the NGO PR Army