"Detector Media" reports their system administrator is MIA
In December 2022, the system administrator of the online media outlet "Detector Media" Vlad D. went missing during a battle in Luhansk oblast. "Detector Media" deputy editor-in-chief, Svitlana Ostapa, reported this.
Vlad went missing during the battle between Kreminna and Serebryanka, Luhansk oblast.
After analyzing the accounts of eyewitnesses, his wife Diana created an approximate outline of what happened on December 13.
"It was a very difficult battle. The Russians were firing on our positions intensely. Then came the Russians' heavy artillery. Senior machine gunner Vlad D. and his comrades joined the battle, trying to give the other guys an opportunity to retreat. Everyone at Vlad's observation spot died, except for him. Vlad tried to retreat, but due to intense crossfire, he was unable to reach his own. It was impossible. According to the boys, he tried to run, but then turned around and jumped into one of the trenches, where the dugout was. And this is the last time anyone saw him," the article says.
When, a few days later, when reconnaisance officers came to that "gray" zone to make sure that there were no wounded, neither Vlad nor his belongings were there.
Considering the fact that Vlad was not among the dead, either, the relatives hope that he has been taken prisoner.
On December 15, 2022, military officers came to Vlad's mother and handed her a notification saying that he was missing in action. A case for disappearance under special circumstances has been opened in the Holosiyiv police station in Kyiv, now it has been passed over to the Luhansk department, whose office is located in Dnipro.
At the same time, on December 16, Vlad's mother received a call from an anonymous number that did not go through. The call lasted 15 seconds, no one spoke or replied to the questions. Men's voices could be heard in the background. "That is, there is no body, there are no belongings, he was seen alive at the very end of the battle, this weird phone call, and plus there are certain positive developments in the search, which gives us hope and strength to move on," said Vlad's wife Diana.
She is monitoring all media resources she can and hopes that her husband has been imprisoned. Diana wants to try and have him listed as a POW and has faith in her husband coming back.
Vlad D. has been a system administrator at Detector Media for over 10 years. With the beginning of the full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, he came to the editorial office to move the servers and other equipment necessary for the work of the NGO and its websites to a safe place.
After that, Vlad made three trips to an enlistment office, and on March 23, he was mobilized at last, receiving the rank of senior private. He sent his wife and two sons to a safe place.
Vlad had no combat experience, he had not served in the army before. He grew up in a family of officers, and was an athlete until the age of 24.
"Vlad had an opportunity to not go to the Eastern Front, he could have stayed in Kyiv. But, having learned that the Serhiy Kulchytsky operational battalion was recruiting people, he flooded them with applications. And they took him. After two weeks of training at the range, his unit was deployed to the Eastern Front in early June," Svitlana Ostapa writes.
Vlad took part in the liberation of Siversk. Then his unit moved higher, to Kreminna. Vlad's summer rotation took place near Slovyansk. He was lucky enough to come home for a two-week vacation on September 22. Then Vlad served in the rear at the Boryspil airfield for several months.
His second frontline rotation lasted only three days. He left Kyiv with his new unit on December 10, 2022. "The last time we spoke was at noon on December 10, and on the 13th, during a battle, he went missing," his wife said.
The wife appealed for help to the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets; the Commissioner for Persons Missing under Special Circumstances, Oleh Kotenko; the Coordination Center at the Office of the Missing Persons Commissioner; and sent out letters to two UN structures. Working with the National Guard was not ideal at first. She was recently briefed on the results of an internal investigation that had been completed in January. She is outraged that Vlad has not been issued a combatant certificate yet.
Help us be even more cool!
