Kharkiv Oblast resident Volodymyr Sonko abducted by Wagner fighters held in Russian captivity for over four years
Members of the Wagner Group abducted Volodymyr Sonko, a civilian, a resident of the village of Hlyboke in the Kharkiv region, from his home on March 17, 2022. He was first held in Lyptsi, then moved to Hoptivka, before being transferred to Russia’s Belgorod region, his mother, Iryna Sonko, told ZMINA.
Volodymyr Sonko. Photos from family archiveBefore the full-scale invasion, Volodymyr studied at Kharkiv Machine-Building College and worked at a car wash.
On March 17, 2022, members of the Wagner Group surrounded the street in the village of Hlyboke where the Sonko family lived. They first went to a neighbor’s house and then to theirs. They checked the phones of everyone in the house. After the search, they took a laptop and the phones of her son and his girlfriend.
“We were all at home that day – me, the grandmother, my son, and his girlfriend, who lived with us. When we went outside, we saw Wagner Group members forcing my son to stand facing the wall with his hands raised,” the woman says.
Wagner Group members told Iryna they were taking Volodymyr “for screening.” If he had done nothing wrong, they said, he would be released – otherwise, he would be taken to Belgorod in Russia.
“We brought him warm clothes. I asked them where they were taking him, and they asked who I was and what my name was. I told them I was his mother. They said they had come to the right address,” the woman says.
Sonko was put into one of three vehicles parked on the street and driven away to an unknown location.
The following day, his relatives submitted complaints to the occupation authorities over Volodymyr’s abduction. However, they received no information.
Later, Iryna Sonko learned from released civilians that her son had first been taken to a vocational training facility in Lyptsi, Kharkiv Oblast, where he was tortured, and was then transferred to the village of Hoptivka, where a border checkpoint with Russia is located.
“There was a Russian headquarters at the facility where detained civilians were interrogated and then sent on. Some were taken to Strileche, others to Hoptivka, where there was a customs checkpoint and where my son was held. They were kept in cages in basements until they were taken to Russia in September,” the woman says.
She later learned that Volodymyr had been taken to the village of Rzhevka in Russia’s Belgorod region and then transferred to Stary Oskol, Russia.
“Released detainees said he was severely exhausted. He had previously suffered from kidney failure,” his mother notes.
In 2023, Iryna Sonko received two letters from Volodymyr in which he wrote that “he was fine and would be home soon.”
“He is registered with the International Committee of the Red Cross. We used the ICRC to pass letters to our son, and we also filed a complaint with the UN“, the woman says.
Earlier, ZMINA reported that blogger Serhii Stroiev, the brother of Quest Pistols member Anton Savlepov, was abducted in the rural settlement Kivsharivka near Kupiansk, Kharkiv Oblast, on April 28, 2022. FSB officers seized him near his home, searched the flat, and drove him away to an unknown location. His mother was initially told he had been taken to Belgorod “for re-education,” but was later told he had been moved to a place whose name they did not know. His whereabouts remain unknown, and he is considered missing.
Another resident of the village of Bohdanivka in Kharkiv Oblast, Mykhailo Slobodian, was abducted from his home on March 8, 2023. In Ukraine, he is considered missing, but his family has received information that he is being held in a detention camp for civilian detainees in the Belgorod region, where Russian deserters are also kept.
According to Slobodian’s mother, nothing is known about the detainees in the camp, as no Ukrainians have been returned from there as part of prisoner exchanges.
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