One of its correspondents in the country’s southeast has gone missing and is suspected to be captured by Russian forces, according to a Ukrainian digital broadcaster.

Hromadske said that reporter Victoria Roshchina was last seen on March 12, a day after filing a piece from the Russian-occupied town of Enerhodar.

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Ukraine’s Human Rights Commissioner, Liudmyla Denisova, stated on Saturday that the administration suspected she had been kidnapped by Russian forces in the Black Sea town of Berdiansk, which is also under Russian occupation.

Hromadske is a local broadcasting station that launched in 2013 and is linked to the Maidan protests in Kyiv that year.

The disappearance of Roshchina comes amid claims of other activists and officials being detained against their will in different parts of Russian-occupied Ukraine.

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According to the mayor of the village of Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region, a senior council official was kidnapped three days ago. Dmytro Vasyliev’s wife stated on her Facebook page that her husband was jailed due of his hostile attitude toward Russia.

Ukraine’s officials have stated that Russia aims to establish a Kherson People’s Republic in the style of the pro-Russian statelets established around Donetsk and Luhansk in 2014, and they have demanded that local councillors support the effort.

In other news, Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov was released from Russian imprisonment as part of a prisoner swap, according to a statement issued by Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security on Thursday. Fedorov was transferred to Luhansk following his arrest and imprisoned for five days.

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According to a video message from Kharkiv Regional State Administration head Oleh Syniehubov on Friday, Viktor Tereshchenko, mayor of the Velykoburlutska community in Ukraine’s northeastern district of Kharkiv, has also been released. Syniehubov reported on Thursday that Tereshchenko had been “captured” by Russian forces.

According to Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, Yevhen Matveyev, the leader of Dniprorudne, a tiny city north of Melitopol, was kidnapped by Russian troops on Sunday. 

According to the human rights organisation ZMINA, Russian military have imprisoned approximately 17 persons in Ukraine since the beginning of the conflict.