Kyiv, Ukraine – Years before Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine began in 2022, Oleksandra Matviichuk and her Center for Civil Liberties, a Kyiv-based human rights group, were already documenting the experiences of Ukrainians captured by Russian soldiers, intelligence operatives and pro-Moscow separatists.
“I personally interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people who survived Russian captivity,” she told Al Jazeera in her office in central Kyiv.
