During the occupation of the right-bank part of the Kherson region, Russian forces twice kidnapped a farmer from Bilozerka, Ihor Palamarchuk. After the second detention the man disappeared without a trace, and his whereabouts have remained unknown for more than three years.
This is reported by the Crimean Tatar Resource Center.
As human rights defender Zarema Barieva recounted, the man lived in the village all his life, worked the land, raised livestock, and ran a family business with his wife. The couple were raising two daughters.
After the start of the full-scale war Ihor evacuated his wife and children abroad, and remained to look after the farm.
The first time he was kidnapped by Russian occupiers at the beginning of the occupation — for ten days. The man was held in a courthouse building converted into a torture chamber, where he was tortured, beaten, subjected to electric shocks, kept without water and food, and several times taken out for a mock execution in an attempt to force him to confess to collaborating with the Ukrainian underground.
On the tenth day Ihor was released, thrown out of a car in a field. After the torture his own mother did not even recognize him. Despite his wife’s pleas to leave, the farmer refused to abandon his home.
On August 16, 2022 Russian forces kidnapped Ihor Palamarchuk for the second time — this time directly from his home. Along with him they detained the saleswoman from his shop, Svitlana.
According to witnesses, the reason for the detention was a denunciation. During the search the occupiers took the store’s takings, as well as money, valuables, equipment, tools, and the farmer’s minibus.
Three days later Svitlana was released without having her documents returned. Ihor has since been considered missing. Representatives of the occupying authorities claimed that the man had allegedly “escaped”.
At the end of August 2022 information emerged that Ihor Palamarchuk had been held in the Sevastopol pre-trial detention center. This was confirmed by a former prisoner of war who had been in the same cell with him. According to him, the prisoners were later to be transferred to Taganrog, however after the transfer the witness no longer saw Ihor.
For three years and five months the farmer’s family has lived in complete uncertainty about his fate. After Bilozerka was liberated by the Armed Forces of Ukraine Ihor’s wife returned to their native village and, despite constant shelling, continues to tend the farm, hoping for her husband’s return.
According to Zarema Barieva, Ihor Palamarchuk’s story is just one of many that testify to systemic kidnappings, torture, and violence against the civilian population in the temporarily occupied territories of the Kherson region.