BERLIN, December 30. /TASS/. Some 15,000 people have been reported missing in Ukraine since late February, the country’s ombudswoman for the rights of prisoners of war and presidential adviser Alena Verbitskaya said in an interview with Germany’s Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND) on Friday.

"According to the latest data, Russia has confirmed 3,392 Ukrainian prisoners, but as many as 15,000 people, including many civilians, have been reported missing in Ukraine," she said. "We know nothing about them."

On Monday, head of the Russian presidential council on the development of civil society and human rights Valery Fadeyev said that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) visits Ukrainian prisoners of war in Russia. He admitted that there are certain bureaucratic problems but promised to help settle them. According to Fadeyev, the ICRC issued positive reports about the conditions Ukrainian prisoners are being kept in at Russian facilities.

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a special military operation in Ukraine in response to a request for help from the heads of the Donbass republics. He stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories, but aimed to demilitarize and denazify the country. After that, the West imposed sweeping sanctions against Russia and beefed up arms supplies to the Kiev regime worth tens of billions of dollars.