More than 300 Russian citizens remain missing two years after Ukrainian forces launched an incursion into the Kursk region in August 2024. According to local officials and family members, at least 330 people have not been located since the eight-month period when Ukrainian troops held territory around the town of Sudzha. Families of the missing have expressed frustration with the Russian government, alleging that authorities failed to conduct adequate searches or provide accurate information during and after the conflict.
The situation began on August 6, 2024, when Ukrainian soldiers crossed the border, captured checkpoints, and seized approximately 300 square miles of Russian territory within six days. Russian authorities estimate that about 2,000 residents remained in the affected settlements during the occupation. The Russian military regained control of the area in the spring of 2025 and began evacuating survivors and recovering bodies, but many individuals remains unaccounted for.
Relatives of the missing, such as a woman identified as Lyubov, reported that their family members stayed behind due to Russian state television broadcasts claiming the situation was under control. In January 2025, Tatyana Moskalkova, then Russia’s Human Rights Commissioner, released a list of 517 missing residents, but families criticized the document as incompetent for mixing the names of the missing with those searching for them. Volunteer groups, including one led by village council head Yuri Tkachev, eventually began retrieving bodies from fields and streets using their own funds for body bags and fuel.
A person living in the region would have noticed the total loss of mobile and internet connectivity for eight months during the Ukrainian occupation, followed by the destruction of up to 90% of some villages, such as Darino, upon the return of Russian forces. The knock-on effects include a breakdown in trust between border-region residents and the federal government, as families allege that state media downplayed the danger and that humanitarian corridors requested by 200 citizens in September 2024 were never established. This sets a precedent regarding how the Russian state manages domestic civilian casualties and missing persons cases during active conflict on its own soil.
What happens next depends on the ongoing identification process at regional mortuaries and the recovery of remains from destroyed settlements. While the Ukrainian human rights commissioner and Territorial Defence Forces stated that all civilians they evacuated were handed over to Russia, many families continue to visit mortuaries in the regional capital of Kursk to check unidentified remains. No specific deadlines for a final tally have been set by the Kursk governor or the Russian Red Cross, both of whom declined to comment on the matter.