KYIV, Ukraine – Polina is a middle-aged woman from eastern Ukraine who was devastated when Russian troops captured her hometown in 2022 and seized her ailing father, who’s blind in one eye and walks with a cane.

Then came another gut-wrenching blow. Russian authorities contacted her on social media and demanded she assist them to ensure that her father — who’s now 71 — was well treated.

“They pressured me for four months. They wanted me to gather some information about one of their attacks,” said Polina.

Another time, the Russians sent her a video of her father.

“They said, ‘Look, he’s OK. He’s smiling. And you haven’t done anything for us yet.’ They kind of pressured me, like, ‘It’s time to do something,'” said Polina, who fled her hometown and now lives in a northern part of the country that’s still under Ukrainian control.

She didn’t help the Russians, and they eventually stopped contacting her. But they accused her father of spying for Ukraine and have held him nearly four years. Polina asked that we use only her first name because she fears for her father’s safety.

Taking advantage of vulnerable families

Russia is believed to be holding thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians as prisoners of war, according to human rights groups and reporting from media outlets like the Kyiv Independent. And what happened to Polina has happened to many relatives of the prisoners, Ukrainians say.

“The families are in a very vulnerable position. They are trying to learn anything about their loved ones in Russian captivity,” said Petro Yatsenko, the Ukrainian government spokesman for the agency that deals with Ukrainian families of prisoners held by Russia.

He said Russia exploits this by withholding information in formal government channels. Instead, the Russians contact Ukrainian families directly.

“Russia never shares any official information about people who are imprisoned,” said Yatsenko.

He believes two Russian agencies, military intelligence, or GRU, and the main domestic security agency, the FSB, are running this highly orchestrated campaign.

When the Russians capture a Ukrainian — a soldier or a civilian — they look up the prisoner’s social media profile and begin contacting family members, Yatsenko said.