A total of 10 minibus drivers had gone to the Donbass region to help evacuate civilians from the besieged city of Mariupol, operating private vehicles in a low-profile rescue mission. Russian soldiers stopped them and tried to get them to drive the buses to Russia. When the drivers refused, they were arrested, said Alex Voronin, the head of the NGO.
Voronin told CNN he lost contact with all but one of the drivers.
“They all carried out the evacuation of people in the direction of Mariupol-Zaporizhia, they were sent on their trips on different dates – on March 26, 27 and 31,” Voronin told CNN. “Communication with them broke off the next day after departure. According to the people who managed to evacuate them, the Russian military took away the vehicles with people in Mariupol from the drivers, the evacuees were taken to the village of Nikolske, the drivers themselves were taken away for identification. Some of them are being held in pre-trial detention centers in Donetsk.”
One of the 10 drivers was released, Voronin told CNN, and from him “we know three of the missing are in Donetsk. They were brutally interrogated, badly fed and held in appalling conditions [in detention] up to 30 days.”
CNN cannot independently verify the whereabouts of the drivers or the conditions in which they are being held. Voronin said the drivers left the Ukrainian-held city of Zaporizhzhzhia and did not travel in a single convoy.
Devastated by weeks of shelling, the city of Mariupol is surrounded by Russian checkpoints. Addressing South Korean lawmakers on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he believes tens of thousands have died in the southern port city.
“The occupiers blocked it and didn’t even allow food and water to be brought there. They tried to take it in the most brutal way – only to destroy everything in the city,” he said.
Ukrainian officials said around 100,000 people still needed to be evacuated from the city but said Russian forces had not allowed convoys of evacuation buses to reach the city. Adding to the humanitarian crisis, US and Ukrainian officials and humanitarian watchdogs say Russian and separatist forces are forcing tens of thousands of civilians into so-called “filtration centers” in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic before transferring them onto Russian territory.
Voronin’s group was formed in Ukraine early in the war on February 24 to help evacuate Ukrainians. He says his group – one of many that have sprung up in the days since the Russian invasion – has “evacuated more than 2,000 people, children, the disabled and the wounded and delivered more than 200 tons of food, humanitarian aid and medicines to the same places, where we evacuate people.”
Voronin says he doesn’t even know who to talk to on the Russian side to get his drivers released. CNN has been unable to verify the whereabouts of the drivers amid the fog of war and confusion at the front lines, and is reporting so at the request of the aid group in hopes that paying attention to the story will bring some protection to the missing drivers.
CNN has solicited comments from Ukrainian officials overseeing negotiations on humanitarian evacuation corridors in Ukraine.