Psychics, Facebook groups: How Ukrainian families try to find missing sons

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Lieutenant Oleg Kurilsky’s last known words were “I am wounded, I need help”. In March last year, he was fighting in Poposna in eastern Ukraine when he was caught up in a massive Russian artillery bombardment. The shelling was far too heavy for comrades to come to his rescue, and his commanders believe he could never have survived.

The dry military verdict of “Missing, presumed dead” does not satisfy his mother, Olha. With Poposna now behind Russian lines, she has no reliable way of knowing if his body was ever found. And until it is, she clings to the hope that he might still be alive.

Oleg Kotenko, the commissioner for issues of missing persons under special circumstances, looks at the unidentified graves of civilians and Ukrainian soldiers in the recently retaken area of Izyum, Ukraine.Credit: AP

“Somehow inside I just feel his presence,” she said in a village outside the south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia. “I’m convinced he’s alive, even if he’s in a terrible state.”

Oleg, 22, is among nearly 24,000 people who have gone missing during Ukraine’s war, according to the country’s newly created Commission for Missing Persons. While many are in all likelihood dead, their families are often reluctant to hold funerals, stranding themselves in a limbo between grief and hope.

Yet where officialdom cannot provide families with answers, other channels of inquiry often beckon. The war has spawned a cottage industry of private sleuths promising help, some more reliable than others.

Psychics offer consultations to check if a loved one is in the afterlife. Hackers tout access to Russian government records listing Ukrainian prisoner of war. And on missing persons pages on Facebook and Telegram, families put out desperate appeals, often with grim smartphone images from the battlefield where their loved one was last seen.

‘I feel that his heart is still beating, but he is in a very small space with the walls pressing in on him.’

Olha has tried all three. On Facebook, she consulted the services of a man calling himself Vasily Shal, who claimed to be able to search Russian prison records. She paid him 2,000 Hryvnas ($A87) for the service, the money apparently being used to pay an intermediary in Russia.

Shal later sent her a redacted prison record that said Oleg was being held in Penal Colony No 3 in Lgov, a Russian city near Ukraine’s north-east border. The information was what Olha had been looking for. “I looked up the jail and it definitely exists, although I have not been able to confirm from the Red Cross or the police that he is there,” she said.

However, Shal’s information may be no more reliable than the pronouncements of the psychics. While Olha said that he appeared to be “genuinely trying to help families”, there is no way of knowing whether the documents are genuine. Shal did not respond to requests for comment.

In her desperation for answers, Olha also consulted three different online psychics, all of whom also claimed her son was now a PoW in Russia. One psychic sent her an audio message saying: “I feel that his heart is still beating, but he is in a very small space with the walls pressing in on him.”

Olha said: “I’m a churchgoer and I don’t normally believe in mediums, but I’ll try anything that might lead me to my son. I can’t help noticing too that they all said the same thing.”

Ukraine’s psychic community has been busy during the war, with mediums offering predictions on everything from impending missile attacks through to the date of an ultimate victory. Many provide “missing persons” consultations for free or at reduced rates, although irrespective of whether money changes hands, critics still accuse them of taking advantage of the vulnerable.

“Diana”, one of the mediums consulted by Olha, said that in the early months of the war, she had up to 70 requests a day from people asking about loved ones trapped in besieged cities like Mariupol.

Explaining her technique, she said: “First, I light a candle and read a prayer. Then I take the missing person’s photo and put my hand on it.” she said. “If my hand feels warm, it means that the person is alive – if cold, it means that the person is no longer here.” If she detected a death, she added, she always urged relatives “not to lose faith and hope”.

Olha has also trawled Telegram channels like Search Ukraine, an unofficial social media site that compiles posts about missing Ukrainian troops. Some consist simply of a soldier’s photo, name, and the date they went missing, together with a family member’s phone number. Other posts just show a dogtag found on a battlefield

There are also images of soldiers in Russian captivity, showing far more than just the Geneva Convention standard of name, rank and number. Some are shown being interrogated or held blindfold, handcuffed and in stress positions. The clips are taken from pro-Kremlin social media channels, where Russian troops often make “trophy” postings of soldiers they have taken prisoner. A few videos show soldiers being captured and roughed up during battle.

They are images that few families would want to confront in their search for a missing loved one. Ukraine’s missing persons commission has also urged people not to post information on such sites, claiming it risks “putting data into the hands of the enemy”.

Yet with no firm proof of her son’s fate, Olha continues to trawl them, unwilling to rule out that he might one day return to the family home, where his military graduation uniform still hangs in his bedroom cupboard.

“I still pray for him all the time,” she said, her voice breaking. “I know my son. I know he is alive.”

The Telegraph, London

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