VIENNA – It was late at night when they came for Dmytro Shabanov, a security assistant in eastern Ukraine at the Special Monitoring Mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

His seizure from his home in the Luhansk region in April 2022 — weeks after Moscow’s full-scale invasion — was part of a coordinated operation by pro-Russian forces who detained him and two other Ukrainian OSCE workers. Maksym Petrov, an interpreter, also was seized in the Luhansk region, while Vadym Golda, another security assistant, was detained in neighboring Donetsk.

More than three years later, the three Ukrainian civilians who had worked with the international group’s ceasefire monitoring efforts in the eastern regions remain behind bars. They have not been part of recent large-scale prisoner exchanges with Russia.

Their detention has raised alarm among OSCE officials, Western nations and human rights advocates, who demand their immediate release while expressing concern about their health and prison conditions amid allegations of torture.

The Russian Foreign Ministry and the Russian mission to the OSCE did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press on those allegations or on OSCE personnel having immunity from prosecution as international civil servants.

Rapidly unfolding events in 2022

“He was taken from his home after the curfew took effect,” said Margaryta Shabanova, Shabanov’s wife, who lives in Kyiv. “I had a last call with him around 20 minutes before it happened.”

After his arrest, Shabanov disappeared for three months, held incommunicado by Russian separatists and interrogated in a Luhansk prison until he was forced to sign a confession.

That fateful night turned Shabanova’s life upside down.

“Every morning, I wake up hoping that today will be different — that today I will hear that my Dima is free,” she said. “Painfully, days stretch on, and nothing changes. The waiting, the not knowing, the endless hope slowly turning into quiet despair.”

Fighting back tears, Shabanova describes life without her husband.

“The silence at the dinner table, the birthdays and holidays have been missed for over three years. People say to me that I am strong, but they don’t see the moments I collapse behind closed doors,” she said.

The Vienna-based OSCE monitors ceasefires, observes elections, and promotes democracy and arms control, and Shabanov “really liked his job” at the international organization, said his wife, especially working with the foreign staff. She said her husband believed that “international service could protect lives and make the world a little more just.”

The OSCE had operated a ceasefire monitoring mission in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Moscow separatists had been fighting Ukrainian government troops since 2014, with about 14,000 killed even before the full-scale invasion. The monitors watched for truce violations, facilitated dialogue and brokered local halts in fighting to enable repairs to critical civilian infrastructure.

But on March 31, 2022, Russia blocked the extension of the OSCE mission, and separatist leaders declared it illegal the following month.

It remains unclear whether the three detained OSCE staffers had tried to flee eastern Ukraine.

Locally recruited Ukrainians like Shabanov, Petrov and Golda worked in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions to help shut down the OSCE mission. They cleared offices, safeguarded OSCE assets, including armored vehicles, drones and cameras, and oversaw evacuations of their international colleagues. That operation was completed by October 2022.

Convictions and prison sentences

The three men were arrested despite carrying documents confirming their immunity, the OSCE said.

Shabanov and Petrov were convicted of treason by a Russian-controlled court in Luhansk in September 2022 and sentenced to 13 years in prison. Golda, 57, was convicted of espionage by a court in Donetsk, also under Moscow’s control, in July 2024 and sentenced to 14 years.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said in November 2022 it believed the activities of the OSCE monitors “were often not only biased but also illegal.” Without identifying the three Ukrainian OSCE staff by name, the ministry alleged that local residents were recruited by the West to collect information for the Ukrainian military and “several” were detained.

The OSCE condemned the sentences and called for the immediate release of the three men, asserting they were performing their official duties as mandated by all of its 57 member states, including Russia.

Seven months after the invasion, Russia illegally annexed the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, despite not fully controlling them.

On March 27, 2025, Russia transferred Shabanov from a detention facility in the Luhansk region to a high-security penal colony in Russia’s Omsk region in Siberia, according to Ievgeniia Kapalkina, a lawyer with the Ukrainian Legal Advisory Group who represents the Shabanov and Petrov families.

Petrov remains at risk of being moved to Russia, she said.

Penal colonies in Siberia are known for harsh conditions, where “prisoners often lose all contact with the outside world, effectively ‘disappearing’ within Russia’s penal system,” the legal group said in March. “Given their existing health issues, the lack of proper medical care in remote regions could prove fatal,” it added.

Allegations of beatings, psychological pressure

Ukrainian human rights activist Maksym Butkevych, who was in the same Luhansk penal colony with Shabanov and Petrov from March 2024 until being released in October 2024, said both men were tortured during interrogation.

Shabanov was “beaten several times during the interrogations until he lost consciousness and was subjected to extreme psychological pressure,” he said.

Butkevych said Shabanov, 38, has problems with his back and legs. “He had to lie down at least for couple of hours every day due to pain,” he added.

Petrov, 45, has “a lot of health issues,” Butkevych said, including allergies worsened by his captivity, “specifically the interrogation period.”

Kapalkina said both men were “subjected to repeated unlawful interrogations during which they suffered severe physical and physiological abuse” and eventually “signed confessions under coercion.”

The allegations of torture could not be independently verified by the AP.

Bargaining chips for Russia?

Butkevych suggested the three imprisoned OSCE workers, who are not prisoners of war, are likely “bargaining chips” for Moscow, to be “exchanged for someone or something significantly important for Russia.”

Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen, the current chairperson of the OSCE, said in a statement to AP that imprisoning civilian officials of an international organization “is completely unacceptable.”

“Securing their release is a top priority for the Finnish OSCE Chairpersonship,” she said.

OSCE Secretary General Feridun H. Sinirlioğlu is “very closely and personally engaged on this matter,” a spokesperson said, noting he traveled to Moscow in March and raised the issue with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Yurii Vitrenko, Ukraine’s ambassador to International Organizations in Vienna, called for the unconditional release of the three, saying they should “never have been illegally detained” by Russia, should “never have been put on a fake trial,” and should “never have been handed illegal sentences.”

Vitrenko suggested that other states with more influence with Russia should exert more pressure to help secure their release. He did not identify those countries.

Shabanova said she regularly asks “those who have the power” to take action.

“Do not look away,” she said, adding that the OSCE and the international community must ask themselves why their actions have not led to the release of her husband.

Her only wish, she said, is “to see my Dima walk through the door, just to hold his hand again, to look into his eyes and say, ‘You are home now. It’s over.’”