MOSCOW, April 18. /TASS/. More than 7,000 Ukrainian servicemen are listed as missing in action, Oleg Kotenko, an ombudsman for persons that went missing under special circumstances, said on Tuesday.

"It’s a bit more than 7,000. We are hoping that the people that we are looking for as missing persons have been captured. About 60%-65% of them, according to our data, are still alive and are in captivity," he said on the Ukrainian television channel Rada.

Kotenko said Ukraine is establishing an electronic roster of missing persons. He said the government will, in about a month, start taking biological samples from military servicemen, in a bid to accelerate their identification if they a killed. According to the official, some servicemen have already provided their DNA voluntarily.