Bohdan Shcherba

Bohdan Shcherba

Date of disappearance:  February 26, 2022

Place of disappearance: Lubianka village, Kyiv region

Bohdan Shcherba, a mechanical fitter who worked at a brick factory in the village of Lubianka, Kyiv region, was abducted by Russians on February 26, 2022. It was the third day of the full-scale invasion, and Russian troops were moving in on the capital and firing heavily all around. Bohdan, along with his wife, children, her brother, and a friend’s family, were setting up a basement for the night. In the afternoon, the husband, a family friend, and his wife’s brother drove toward the village of Ozero to pick up a relative but never got in touch again. 

— “A few hours later, my father decided to go the same way, but on a bicycle,” says Olha, Bohdan’s wife, “but Russian soldiers blocked one of the streets and did not let my father go. I learned from the released hostages that Bohdan’s car was stopped and searched. In the glove compartment, the Russians noticed a radio that the brick factory workers where Bohdan and my brother worked used to communicate. The men were abducted.

From her sources, Olha learned that all three were held in the cold storage rooms of the Gostomel airport. There, the men were interrogated and filmed for propaganda channels, where they were presented as “hungry Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered to the Russians.” On March 7, 2022, they were taken from the airport, and on March 13, they were taken to a tent city near the city of Kursk, after which they were transferred to SIZO No. 1 in the same city. All three were held in different cells. After some time, their relatives learned that the boys had been transferred to a penal colony in the village of Malaya Loknya, Kursk region. In November 2022, Olha read in one of the telegram channels that searched for people that her husband was being held in the Taganrog detention center. In the summer of 2023 and winter of 2024, she received information that Bohdan had been transferred to the Kursk detention center again. Currently, the exact place of detention and the state of health of her husband, who has been held in captivity for more than three years, remains unknown.

This publication was compiled with the support of the International RenaissanceFoundation. It’s content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the International Renaissance Foundation.