“Good people” from… FSB. How Russians recruit relatives of prisoners of war and missing soldiers

At the same time, thousands of people live next to us who are truly tirelessly searching for their missing or captured relatives and unwittingly become targets of the FSB.

“Many families receive messages “from the other side,” says Petro Yatsenko, a representative of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, in an interview with Glavcom.

How do enemy special services “behind the scenes” find such people, what methods do they use to influence them, and for what tasks do they exploit them?

 

 

“Families of missing and captured persons are the most vulnerable subjects for pressure and manipulation, because they are in a special psycho-emotional state - anxiety, despair and depression are combined with a constant feeling of guilt, a desire to act, to independently carry out the search. At the same time, it always seems to them that everything that has been done is not enough. People in this state usually have impaired cognitive functions and find it difficult to make decisions,” explains Olena Sek, a psychologist of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who has been working with families of missing persons and prisoners of war, as well as with soldiers who have already returned from captivity since 2014.

“In fact, all these people have an “information addiction” - they follow a multitude of hostile and suspicious channels, join dozens of groups on social networks and therefore begin to lose their understanding of “clean” sources of information.”

They are “caught” by hostile special services on Viber, Telegram and Facebook. After all, relatives communicate with anyone who gives them the slightest hope.

Usually, relatives are found through thematic groups on social networks and through pseudo-humanitarian organizations created in Russia, which duplicate the functions of structures that, according to international law, should carry out such activities, in particular, the International Committee of the Red Cross.

“These Russian clones are completely under the control of the special services and, also, collect information about families and can involve them in cooperation,” says Petro Yatsenko, a representative of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

 

In addition, people themselves make it easier for attackers to find them by posting detailed information about their missing son, father or husband in chat rooms, indicating the unit number in which he served, position, location and circumstances of his disappearance, and posting photos in military uniform.

The Russians lie to the relatives of the missing that their soldier is probably in captivity, but there is not enough information to identify him, and promise the relatives of prisoners the opportunity to talk on the phone, deliver packages, provide necessary medicines, improve prison conditions and be included in priority lists for release.

In the period 2022-2023, about 30 percent of those released from captivity were on the list of missing persons. Now less than one percent.

The families of the missing are desperately hoping that their loved one miraculously survived and ended up in captivity, was simply wounded and lost his documents. The Russians can keep the relatives of the soldiers on the hook for a very long time.

In the early years of the Great War, many captured soldiers were indeed listed as missing in action in Ukraine. In 2022-2023, about 30 percent of those released from Russian captivity were, according to the Coordination Headquarters.

“However, over time, more and more information is coming in, so this percentage is constantly decreasing. Now we can say that less than one percent of those who return are considered missing. These are almost isolated cases,” says Petro Yatsenko.

What Russian intelligence services need

 

First of all, Russian intelligence services use contacts with relatives to obtain intelligence information. Contactors ask everything they can: about the unit in which the missing soldier served, the problems that exist in the unit, weapons, etc.

“It would seem that this is accurate and, perhaps, insignificant information, but this is fertile ground for OSINT masters, because after collecting a large amount of information and analyzing it, you can draw conclusions of a military nature,” comments Olena Sek.

Initially, when the FSB contacts relatives, people may not even have any idea that these are special services - they seem like polite, sympathetic interlocutors, who want to help and somehow improve the situation. Further communication turns into pressure and brutal blackmail: go and take a picture of such and such an object - and we will give you information about the whereabouts of your husband or father, son, or we will help him have easier conditions in the colony. It is easy to manipulate people who are under constant stress.

Apparently, not everyone is in a hurry to report suspicious calls to the SBU, even if they feel that they are dealing with special agencies “behind the scenes”. People adhere to the conspiracy vow “you will not tell anyone”, or they consciously enter into this interaction. They probably hope to snatch a loved one from his clutches or ransom him by conspiring with the devil. And such a tactic of behavior threatens with extremely unpleasant surprises, warns Olena Sek.

For example, there was a case when, due to distrust in our institutions, the father of a special forces officer, who had not been in contact for a long time, began to communicate with representatives of the “LNR”; they deceived the man by bribing him with false information that his son was in captivity. The father handed over the entire package of his son’s documents to the interlocutors, and it soon became clear that he was alive and well, and that he was on a mission. The seemingly happy ending was overshadowed by the fact that the son lost his career.

Thus, the Russians use relatives of captured and missing soldiers (and not only them) primarily for intelligence gathering and special tasks. Sometimes, adds Petro Yatsenko, relatives who were forced to cooperate are used as "disposable agents".

Reports of the discovery of such cases have recently been appearing more and more frequently in the information field, and some of them shock with their espionage ingenuity. A relatively recent example is the preparation of the assassination of the commander of the "Da Vinci Wolves" battalion, Sergei Filimonov, who was ordered by a resident of the Dnieper by an FSB agent, posing as an SBU employee. The Russians sent the man a fake invitation to summon him for questioning at the SBU and encouraged him to eliminate Filimonov, allegedly as a "traitor" who carried out missile attacks on Kiev.

Another area of activity of the FSB in "working" with Ukrainians, especially families of prisoners and missing persons, is information and psychological operations.  

 

“They call and put pressure, brutally blackmail, bringing people to a terrible emotional crisis. In such a state, people can be forced to broadcast what the “customers” want to hear or to shake their faith in what they considered correct yesterday. So, posts appear on social networks that discredit the Ukrainian army, various social communities. The game of narratives continues. For example, starting in 2023, the Russians will use the thesis that was manipulatively introduced into the information space back in 2015-2016: they say, Ukraine does not want to take back its fallen heroes, Ukraine does not want to take back its prisoners,” says Sek.

By the way, relatives of prisoners are not only easy prey for enemy special services, but also free. After all, when recruiting young men or teenagers who are hungry for quick money to adjust targets, set fire to relay cabinets on the railway, military vehicles or plant homemade explosives at the facility they need, the Russians promise money and, as a rule, pay. Desperate relatives of prisoners do not have to pay anything - they do not need money, they need information that gives hope. Moreover, they themselves are ready to pay for information about their loved ones.

 

 

These people are being hunted not only by enemy special services, but also by cynical scammers on both sides of the border. There are even scammers wearing Russian army epaulets.

So Olena Sek recalls a case from 2022, when the Kadyrovites called all the family members of a young soldier who was captured, trying to "extort money", while threatening to cut off the prisoner's fingers and head if the family refused to pay the ransom. A ransom of about five thousand dollars was paid, but the relatives did not wait for the guy...

"His fate is still unknown, he is still on the list of missing persons," says Olena.

If we are talking about "ordinary" domestic scammers who are trying to profit from the grief of military families, then, according to the observations of the interlocutor of "Glavcom", they knocked on the address of almost every family.

“The scammers present themselves as volunteers or brothers of the missing person and say that he is wounded, in the hospital, they urgently need funds for an operation or transportation to another hospital. Or they offer to find the place where the soldier who is considered missing is buried for a financial reward. Or to facilitate the possibility of talking to the prisoner by phone or to arrange for him to be included in the lists for the exchange of prisoners. There is a standard list of legends. After the first payments, the contact disappears,” says Sek.

There are many such cases of heinous fraud. One of the latest cases revealed by law enforcement agencies occurred in the Dnipropetrovsk region two months ago: two men (by the way, conscripts!) deceived the families of defenders for five million hryvnias, promising assistance in freeing their relatives from captivity. The investigation identified 23 victims. In the apartment where the perpetrators were detained, a dozen mobile phones and many SIM cards were found. For fraud on a particularly large scale, the young men face up to 12 years in prison with confiscation of property.

Therefore, the Coordination Headquarters recommends to relatives of prisoners of war and missing soldiers: if unknown persons call you and offer help, contact the SBU immediately.