Sawt Falasteen - 1,327 days: Families pine for OSCE employees detained in Russia

Moscow says the matter is closed. But the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) says three of its workers arrested in Russian-occupied Ukraine in 2022 are being held on trumped up charges, and is demanding them back.

Dmytro Shabanov, Maxim Petrov and Vadym Golda were part of an OSCE mission sent to Ukraine's Donetsk and Lugansk regions in 2014, after fighting erupted there between Kyiv and pro-Russian separatists.

They were arrested shortly after Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022 and sentenced by courts in the separatist regions to lengthy prison sentences.

"The waiting, not knowing, the endless hope slowly turning into quiet despair -- it is a kind of suffering no family should endure," Shabanov's wife Margaryta Shabanova told AFP, adding that 1,327 days have passed since her husband's arrest on April 15, 2022.

The 36-year-old travelled to Vienna this week to remind delegates gathering for the OSCE's annual ministerial meeting on Thursday and Friday that her husband and his colleagues are still not home.

But neither Russia nor the United States is sending top diplomats to this year's meeting, reducing the spotlight on it.

- 'Illegal detention' -

Founded in 1975 to ease tensions between the East and the West during the Cold War, the OSCE counts 57 members from Turkey to Mongolia, the UK and Canada, as well as the United States, Ukraine and Russia.

The mission that Shabanov, Petrov and Golda were part of withdrew following Russia's invasion, and Moscow has since blocked the renewal of its mandate at the OSCE.

But the withdrawal was abrupt, and local staff including the three stayed behind.

Shabanov, a security assistant, and Petrov, a translator, were sentenced in September 2022 to 13 years in prison on treason charges after closed-doors trials in the self-proclaimed Lugansk People's Republic, one of the Ukrainian separatist regions.

In July 2024, a court in the similarly self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic sentenced Golda, another security assistant to the mission, to 14 years in a strict-regime penal colony for "espionage".

Prosecutors said Golda "carried out reconnaissance activities in the interests of foreign intelligence", gathering "data on industrial facilities that were subsequently hit with missile strikes".

The OSCE has repeatedly called for the men's release from "illegal detention".

"Our colleagues remain OSCE staff members and had been performing official duties as mandated by all 57 participating states," OSCE Secretary General Helga Maria Schmid has said.

The Russian foreign ministry did not immediately respond to AFP's request for comment.

Russia's permanent representative at the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, has accused the OSCE's monitoring mission of "illegal actions".

"Some of its staff, instead of monitoring, were involved in reviewing and passing intelligence data to Kyiv," he said last year.

"They faced Russian justice on serious criminal charges... And this matter is closed."

- 'Urgent' -

Golda's son, Egor Golda, told AFP that "Ukraine, the West and the OSCE must all contribute to his release or to having him exchanged", even if it means "negotiating with Russia".

Lawyer Eugenia Kapalkina, who travelled with Shabanova to Vienna and also represents relatives of Petrov, warned that the health of the three men -- in isolation under severe conditions -- is deteriorating.

Shabanov, now 38 years old, was deported to the Omsk penal colony in Siberia in March this year, while Petrov, now 45, was deported to Chelyabinsk in Siberia at the end of July 2025. He was recently hospitalised.

Lawyer Kapalkina has demanded "urgent and decisive action", adding that the release of the three must become "a condition for any ceasefire or peace agreement" between Russia and Ukraine.

She said the men's lengthy detention sets a dangerous precedent that "those working for international organisations, even under official mandates, are no longer shielded".

An OSCE employee, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, noted that "whatever action the organisation has taken, the OSCE employees ... are not home".

The OSCE insists securing the men's release remains an "absolute priority".

"We are working tirelessly to ensure they can return to their loved ones as soon as possible," an OSCE spokesperson told AFP.

I.Matar--SF-PST