Russian military abducted nearly two dozen villagers from the Sumy region border area

The Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights and “Kordon.media” reported that the Russian military abducted 19 residents from a border village in the Sumy region.

Sopych village on the map

This refers to the residents of the village of Sopych in the Esman “hromada,” a local government area that includes one or more nearby settlements. As of May 2025, just over 20 people remained in the settlement, meaning the Russian military had abducted the entire village.

Journalists of “Kordon.media” specify that in Sopych, as well as in the neighboring villages of the same hromada —Komarivka, Bobylivka, Kharkivka, and Sydorivka — the Russians have been attempting to infiltrate since last December.

The abducted individuals are in the Russian Federation thanks to a propaganda news report. The Russians claim that the civilians, including the elderly, were moved to Russia’s Bryansk region. Sources among the Sumy journalists confirmed that the people shown in the video were indeed residents of Sopych.

One of the abducted men from the village of Sopych. Video grab

Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets has already reached out to his Russian counterpart, Tetiana Moskalkova, asking her to verify the conditions under which people are being held and facilitate their return home.

“Such actions are a clear violation of international humanitarian law — forced deportation of civilians and a gross disregard for the laws and customs of war,” the Commissioner added.

This is not the first recent instance of the Russian military abducting borderland residents. At the end of last year, 50 residents of the village of Hrabovske, also in the Sumy Oblast, were similarly abducted to Russia, prompting local authorities to intensify evacuation efforts.

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To provide background, human rights activists have criticized the recently adopted law on mandatory evacuation, and ZMINA has reported in Ukrainian on the issues they highlight. Furthermore, some involved in the process have criticized the placement of evacuees in institutions; ZMINA has explained possible alternatives, as housing remains one of the primary challenges for internally displaced persons in their new locations.

A day earlier, Ukrainian authorities stated that Hungary “took hostages, seven Ukrainian cash-in-transit collectors of the Ukrainian Oshchadbank”. They were transporting over two billion hryvnias from Austria to Ukraine under an agreement between Raiffeisen and Oschadbank.