Kyiv, Ukraine
CNN
—
“Hi, Mom. All good. I will be offline, probably for a long time, maybe a week or month. Don’t worry.”
That was the last message Nazar Ocheretnyi sent his mother, on March 30, 2022. Nearly three years later, he still hasn’t been in touch. The Ukrainian combat medic disappeared aged 33 in Mariupol, the eastern Ukrainian city that was then under siege in one of the bloodiest chapters in the Russian war against Ukraine.
On April 12, 2022, Ocheretnyi’s mother, Valentyna Ocheretnaya, was officially informed that her son was missing in action, “possibly captured.” Despite his 61-year-old mother’s tireless search, as of March 2025 he remains…
