Russians seek answers over hundreds missing after Ukraine's 2024 incursion

"I used to have complete faith in our country," says Lyubov. The last time she spoke to her mother was a day after Ukrainian forces broke into Russia's Kursk region more than two years ago.

Now she feels "resentful towards the [Russian] state", in a country where most people avoid criticising the full-scale invasion unleashed on Ukraine in February 2022.

The local governor says more than 300 Russians are still missing in Kursk region, but no-one really knows the true figure.

Lyubov says she tried to persuade her mother to leave her village in the Sudzha area, but blames Russian state TV "propaganda" for her refusal to listen. Some 2,000 people remained in the settlements captured by Ukraine's military, Russian authorities estimate.

"The state channels were convincing viewers that 'everything is under control: two or three days, and it'll be just as it was before'," she recalls.

She still fails to understand why Russian authorities could not stop Ukrainian soldiers storming two border checkpoints in August 2024, taking around 40 prisoners and bombing a convoy carrying Russian soldiers.

Within six days they had overrun more than 777 sq km (300 sq miles) of Russian territory, as Ukraine's military sought to divert Russian forces away from their front-line offensive.

For most of the next eight months, mobile and internet links were down.

Russia's foreign ministry repeatedly accused Ukraine of war crimes against civilians: allegations rejected in Kyiv as completely unfounded.

Nearly 200 Russians sent a letter to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, Russia's President Vladimir Putin and the United Nations, asking them to organise a humanitarian corridor to evacuate civilians.

It never happened and, by late autumn, battles raged as Russian forces sought to retake the territory.

Lyubov and others who had lost contact with their loved ones began to form groups.

One resident, whose family friends had also stayed behind, began compiling a list of people she saw on videos published by the Ukrainian military and journalists. Then she began detailing those believed to have died and where they were buried.

"At first, in a panic, you try to do something – anything – to find some sort of information," she said. "Taking action brings a certain sense of relief, and that's how you can cope with the stress."

Soon about 1,000 names were on the list.

Lyubov wrote to the Red Cross and Kursk interior ministry appealing for help, but had no response.

Early in 2025, Russia's human rights commissioner published a list of 517 Kursk residents reported missing. The list mixed up names of the missing with those who were searching for them, and the families said it was like a "slap in the face".

"Publishing something like this is the height of incompetence and a lack of basic respect for people," said one young woman whose parents had gone missing, in a video shared online.

Heavy fighting had been reported in late 2024 in the village of Darino, where Lyubov and mother were from, and authorities said that 90% of it had been destroyed.

The Russian military regained control of the village and then began evacuating those who had survived, and the bodies of those who had not.

One of the evacuees got in touch with Lyubov, telling her she had lived with her mother for the past few weeks. Her mum had passed away, she explained, following a head injury in circumstances that remain unclear.

A few other elderly people had also died, she said, unable to cope with wartime conditions.

Lyubov waited in vain for her mother's body to be brought out, while other families had no idea if their relatives were alive or dead.

People complained no-one was searching for their loved ones and that there was no single list of those missing.

Lyubov heard that the bodies of neighbours who died alongside her mother had been taken away from Darino in April, but her mother's body was still missing.

She tried and failed to get an answer from the authorities: "They wouldn't listen, and everyone just kept saying that it was dangerous there, and no-one was going to deal with it right now."

The head of one local village council, Yuri Tkachev, was among volunteers who went to retrieve the bodies of civilians, from the streets or from nearby fields.

"It's hard for people to know – or rather not to know – what has happened to their loved ones, whether they're being held captive or have died, and where they died," he said.

Body bags and fuel for vans taking part in the evacuations were paid for either by the volunteers themselves or with donations, but not by authorities.