(Kyiv, December 22) – Russian forces forcibly disappeared Iryna Horobtsova, a resident of Kherson, Ukraine, in May 2022, and are understood to have unlawfully transferred her to Russian-occupied Crimea, where they are holding her incommunicado, Human Rights Watch said today.In late June, Russian security services, in a letter to a lawyer in Crimea, acknowledged Horobtsova’s detention but provided no information about where she was being held.In July, Human Rights Watch documented 42 cases in which Russian occupation forces in Khersonska and Zaporizka regions either forcibly disappeared civilians or otherwise held them arbitrarily, in some cases incommunicado, and tortured many of them.Six men, who did not introduce themselves, searched the flat while the other five waited outside, near two cars marked with “Z,” the Russian government’s propaganda symbol of support for the war in Ukraine.On June 28, Kurbedinov received a response from the FSB department in Crimea that acknowledged Horobtsova had been detained for allegedly “resisting the special military operation.” The letter stated that a “decision about her” would be made “upon completion of the special military operation on the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk’ People’s Republics and Ukraine.” The letter neither identifies the detaining authority nor indicates her whereabouts Responses from the Penitentiary Service and Defense Ministry th Kurbedinov also received in June claimed there was no such person in their systems."