The first public sign of Oleg Baturin after his kidnapping by Russian occupiers was a bleeding Ukraine flag, which he posted on Facebook on Sunday.

"Welcome back," wrote a woman underneath.

"We were so worried." Prior to that, his profile had been silent for eight days.

Since then, the journalist, who has been reporting on the war since the beginning, has published articles about other Ukrainians who have disappeared: a school director who was taken from his home, a 20-year-old from Kakhovka who was taken from the street in the presence of his mother.

Sofia Dreisbach

Editor in Politics.

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Frederick Smith

Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.

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"The mother fell on her knees, cried loudly, begged her son to be released," he writes.

In most cases, the reference is that the current whereabouts are unknown.

Whether they will ever return is never known for certain.

Baturin was one of the lucky ones who was granted that.

He was arrested on March 12 at the Kachowka bus station.

In a letter distributed by a friend, he recounts what happened to him during that time.

"They said they would kill me." He was beaten, humiliated, threatened.

There was hardly anything to eat and hardly anything to drink for days, he didn't know where he was.

"They wanted to break me [...] to show what will happen to any journalist."

Another of many cases from the first month of the Russian war in Ukraine became known only on Tuesday.

According to a colleague, contact with Ukrainian photojournalist Maks Levin has been lost since March 13 after he reported from the combat zone near Kyiv.

He could have been killed or taken away by Russian troops.

Levin already documented the war in eastern Ukraine.

He escaped in August 2014, when hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers were killed trying to exit the pocket around the city of Ilovaisk in Donetsk region through a "humanitarian corridor" promised by Russia.

"Crimes Against Democracy"

However, the cases of missing or kidnapped Ukrainians do not only affect journalists, but also activists, civilians and politicians - one of the first prominent was the mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, who has since been released.

Especially in places where residents take to the streets against the Russian occupiers, this is a tried and tested means of stirring up fear and insecurity.

According to his own statement, Mayor Fedorov was asked during his six-day abduction to stop the protests and to cooperate with the Russian occupying forces.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described his case as a "crime against democracy".

Two journalists from the AP news agency were taken from occupied Mariupol by Ukrainian soldiers to avoid being arrested by Russians and forced to publicly false testimony - as has happened in other cases.