Horror as Russian soldiers abduct tens of elderly women in 'medieval' 'ISIS-like' raid

Fighting has intensified in Ukraine's Sumy region (Image: Getty)

Russian forces allegedly abducted around 50 civilians from a village in the northern Sumy region in a cross-border incursion, Ukraine's human rights commissioner said. Dmytro Lubinets has accused Russian soldiers of crossing the border near the village of Hrabovske and detaining 50 residents on Thursday before forcibly taking them to Russia on Saturday. Most of them are elderly women refusing to evacuate despite intensified fighting along the border. One of the women is 89 years old. 

The civilians were held without contact and their current whereabouts remain unknown, Lubinets said. He has reached out to the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation, asking about their whereabouts, the conditions of their detention and urging for their immediate safe return to Ukraine. He also sent a letter to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), calling on the international community to "provide a proper legal assessment of Russia's actions".

"These actions constitute violations of the laws and customs of war, unlawful deprivation of liberty, and forced deportation of civilians," Lubinets wrote on X.

Hrabovske, 200 metres from the Russian border, is a village in the Sumy region in northeast Ukraine, where the Ukrainian army is battling an attempted Russian breakthrough.

"Fighting is currently ongoing in the village of Hrabovske," Ukraine's joint task force said, adding that troops were "making efforts to drive the occupiers back into Russian territory".

However, dismissed media reports show that Russian soldiers were also in the neighbouring Riasne village.

Lubinets' claims could not be independently verified and Russia made no public comment. However, according to Deutsche Welle, the army said on Saturday they had captured the village of Vysoke, a few kilometres from Hrabovske.

Andrii Sybiha, Ukraine's foreign minister, said on X: "With such medieval raids, Putin's Russia shows it is no different from terrorist groups like ISIS, Boko Haram, or Hamas. We demand our civilian hostages to be returned home."

Viktor Trehubov, the head of the Joint Forces Communications Department, called the incident a "localised provocation".

He said: "It looks like some kind of more localised provocation in an area that was not a key area before. It's not about strategic goals, it's about kidnapping people for some kind of political or information attack."

Kyiv and the International Criminal Court (ICC) have accused Moscow of systematically abducting and forcibly transferring thousands of Ukrainian civilians, including children, from occupied territories. While the ICC has issued arrest warrants over these alleged deportations - citing violations of international humanitarian law - Russia continues to deny the charges.