Ukraine war: The Telegram group tracing missing relatives

Thousands of families have been separated in the chaos of fighting in Ukraine. Power cuts and disruption to internet and mobile phone services mean many have gone weeks without hearing news of loved ones in areas hit by intense Russian shelling.

Sergey was sheltering with his family in a bomb shelter when he left to get food. Fierce fighting meant he couldn't get back to them, and the next day his phone went dead.

Desperate for news, his brother Vladimir turned to a Telegram group set by a Ukrainian TV presenter which shares information about missing people.

The group, called Search for the Missing, has grown to more than 80,000 members since it launched earlier this month, and receives thousands of pleas for help every day.

Hours after he posted about his brother, and four days after Sergey went missing, Vladimir got a phone call from the family of Sergey's wife in Kyiv, who had seen the message. "By the end of the day, they called to tell me that my brother had made his way to them," Vladimir said.

Sergey had made it to another shelter, but with no food and water, he and the people he was with decided to surrender to Russian troops. "They took a white flag and went out to the Russians. After a search, they were released. Then with the help of volunteers, he drove to Kyiv," Vladimir says.

The rest of Sergey's family eventually made it out of Bucha and to safety in Gdansk, Poland. "I experienced feelings that I have never experienced in my life," Vladimir says. "It was such welcome news in these difficult days." Sergey has since returned to Ukraine to join the army, he says.

Search for the Missing was started by Katya Osadcha, a former model, journalist and popular reality TV presenter. She was desperate to help when the war started, but felt she "couldn't shoot or be a soldier" because she has two small children.

Instead, she asked friends on Instagram to help and now she and 15 volunteers run the group 24 hours a day, checking each message for details, and filtering out duplicates.

'Overwhelmed'

Katya says they have helped about 300 people find missing relatives, each one a happy update - a flurry of red hearts, praying and crying emojis - among the channel's endless stream of desperate pleas for information.

"You receive pictures of happy people on holidays, and their friends and family are writing to us saying that they are missing and the last call was five days ago from a shelter, and there has been a lot of bombing."

Emma Shymanovych, who helps run the channel, says the small team of volunteers has been overwhelmed: "It's extremely painful to read enquiries about lost children, or about children looking for their parents. It's hard to express what we feel."

Yulia, 25, left her mother, brother and sister behind when she escaped the city of Mariupol with her husband and two-month-old baby: "The last time I spoke to them, they had not had electricity, water, heating and communications for several days."

When she couldn't get through to them, Yulia contacted local authorities and friends who might still be in the city to see if they knew anything, but got nowhere, and posted on the Telegram channel.

"I push the worst thoughts away from me," she said. "I really hope they're safe and they just don't have a connection. I only hope for an immediate ceasefire." Not long after we spoke, Yulia sent me a message to tell me her mother had finally been able to make contact, but was still in Mariupol. "She spoke for just a minute. Thank God!"

Iryna posted a picture of her friend's 23-year-old daughter Julia, after she went missing in Kyiv. "Her mother was crying constantly," she says. She tried asking for news on Facebook and other Telegram channels, eventually turning to Search for the Missing.

"Within 24 hours I started getting responses from people who knew her. Some said they didn't know anything, but then her friends got in touch and said Julia had broken her phone and hadn't been able to make contact."

Julia had dropped her phone when she was running to a bomb shelter and she didn't know her mother's phone number off by heart.

Thousands more are still trapped in Mariupol. Olga, who lives in Istanbul, posted in the channel after losing contact with her 31-year-old daughter Daria and her two grandchildren Mark, 4, and Lydia, 5, who live there.

Olga last heard from her daughter on 28 February. In a text message, Daria wrote that a shell had hit their apartment building, and there was no electricity or heating. "I don't know what to do at all" the message said. "I'm scared. The children are dressed, there are a lot of blankets. Mariupol is encircled by the enemy. We have a very bad connection."

Olga has almost given up hope of hearing from them. Monday was her daughter's birthday. "I'm terrified of everything and I never thought that my family would be affected by war" she says.

Olga, from Bakhmut, posted in the group to try to find news of her daughter, Alice, and eight-month-old grandson, Timofey, in Mariupol. The last she heard from them, they were sheltering with neighbours in the basement of a supermarket without electricity, water or heating.

Since then, she has received a message that the building they were hiding in was bombed, and she is anxiously waiting for more news. "Whether they are alive and where they are now - I don't know."