About 3,400 Ukrainian servicemen are now in Russia's captivity, another 15,000 people are missing, Aliona Verbytska, presidential envoy for ensuring the rights of Ukrainian defenders, said.

According to her, Russia is denying the Red Cross access to POW camps and is systematically violating the Geneva Convention.

"We do not know what happened to them (with the missing). Whether they are also Russian prisoners of war, whether they were forcibly removed from the territories occupied by Russia, or, perhaps, they were killed long ago. Such uncertainty is especially difficult for relatives," the Telegram channel of the Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security of Ukraine quotes Verbytska.

According to head of the Main Intelligence Agency of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine Kyrylo Budanov, as a result of the work of the Coordination Headquarters, 1,456 Ukrainian defenders have already been released from the captivity of the aggressor state as of December 30.