Volunteer stormtrooper from Donetsk Denis Sergeevich Reznikov went to the front line on November 8, 2022. His wife and teenage daughter, Elizaveta, are waiting for him at home. The man disappeared in March - he last called his family on March 8 and never got in touch again.

On the evening of March 26, the daughter of a serviceman received a call from an unknown number. The caller introduced himself as Andrey and stated that he served in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Based on the dialect, the girl assumed that the caller was indeed Ukrainian. He told Lisa that her dad was being held captive, but he was alive and well—for now. 

After this, the interlocutor began to blackmail the daughter of a prisoner of war from the Russian Federation, demanding that she send personal data and also leak the database of activists of the public organization “Young Guard”, in which she is a member.

“This Andrey sent me a photo of my dad, who was badly beaten. They demanded that I send them my passport details, place of residence, phone number and merge the database of all activists of the Young Guard organization - all activists who are now active and helping people,” Lisa herself told RT.

Elizaveta has been a member of the Young Guard for two and a half years. In parallel with her studies at the pedagogical college, she is engaged in social activities and helping people. Somehow the attackers found out about this. Why they needed a base of activists, one can only guess. Moreover, the callers knew that in the summer the girl was going to work as a counselor at a children’s camp, and were very interested in whether she would stay in the DPR or go to another Russian region.

“Your dad is still alive. That's where the good news ends."

Having received the “demands” of the attackers, put forward in exchange for the life of her father, Lisa panicked greatly. The girl provided RT with a recording of one of the conversations with the Ukrainians who called her - in it you can hear Lisa crying from despair and fear. The men on the other end of the line - there were two speakers - rudely demanded that she calm down and start following their instructions.

“You’re in the wrong situation right now, don’t talk to me like that, just do what I tell you and everything will be fine. I'll stop pushing for pity. They are having a normal conversation with you now. You want everything to be fine with dad?” — one of the callers admonished Lisa.

  • From left to right: a still from the video with Denis Sergeevich, which was sent by Ukrainian blackmailers; daughter of Denis Sergeevich, Lisa

  • RT

  • © photo from personal archive/RT

The second man who put pressure on Lisa introduced himself as “the man directly responsible for the fate of her father.” This intruder no longer stood on ceremony - he called and intimidated the girl, demanding to follow his instructions.

“The fate of your father depends on you now, don’t be a fool, pull yourself together and use your head. First: your dad is alive. This is good news for you and for him. That's where the good news ends for now. Because he is only alive for now. Treat yourself with the thought that he is alive and well. By communicating with us, you speed up his return home. If you do everything right, dad will come home. Like thousands of your guys (returning. -

RT

) on exchange home,” said the second caller.

“Don’t give up your people and don’t give up”

After finishing the conversation, Lisa wanted to consult with her mother. Together they decided not to send any information to the blackmailers, rightly believing that, having taken possession of the girl’s personal data, the attackers could make further attempts to manipulate her and force her to carry out their other tasks.

In the process of communicating with people supposedly “responsible” for the fate of her father, the girl actually received one such “task” - she was required to visit a certain military building not far from her home and take photographs of it, as well as record a video. The girl refused all this, although she understood that her father could be killed.

“I was very scared for my dad, because I didn’t know how to help. Helping him by sending over my data and the data of the organization - it’s unlikely that I would have helped with that, they would have only continued to blackmail us. I was constantly receiving messages in PM like: send it quickly, I’m waiting. That is, they deliberately rushed me so that I did not have time to weigh and think anything. They asked me to dump the database, but I didn't do it. My father would be very unhappy with me. He would never have encouraged me if, even for his sake, I had given up my own people. “He taught me all my life never to give up and never give up,” emphasized RT’s interlocutor.

Lisa and her mother contacted law enforcement agencies in the hope that this would help identify the attackers and free Denis Sergeevich from captivity. The girl really hopes that her dad is alive: when she stopped communicating with the blackmailers, they sent her a video with her father. In the recording, the man has a bag on his head, and he, clearly at the behest of his tormentors, asks his daughter to contact them again by phone. Lisa and her mother decided to make the story as public as possible in order to increase Denis Sergeevich’s chances of salvation.

Blackmail of families of prisoners of war from the Russian Federation

Earlier, RT talked about several more families who suffered from Ukrainian blackmailers. Thus, a pensioner from Buryatia, Svetlana Stepanova, encountered scammers twice: they called her from different Ukrainian numbers and demanded that she send either 200 thousand or 300 thousand rubles in exchange for the life of her son, who was captured. This story was resolved successfully: Svetlana Fedorovna did not succumb to blackmail, and her son Artyom was exchanged and returned to Russia. He's home now.

Relatives of servicemen Alexei Motuz and Roman Zhernov also told RT about blackmail from the Ukrainian side. Unknown people calling from Ukrainian numbers demanded intimate photographs from Alexei’s wife and Roman’s common-law wife in exchange for the lives of their spouses.

The whereabouts of Zhernovy and Motuz remain unknown to this day; in both cases, criminal cases of fraud have been opened, and a military investigation is looking for the soldiers themselves.