Vira Kryvoshenko kneeled on the ground by her front door and pressed her hands together in a prayer: please do not take my son.

It was only blind bad luck that Valeriy had arrived at the same time as the "evil spirits", as she called them. He was in the town of Makhariv, delivering food and medicine to her and her neighbours - older people who could not, or would not, flee the Russians.

Vira looked up. The Russian soldiers were a few feet away, spray painting "V" symbols on her car, to avoid friendly fire when they drove it away. One of them - just a boy, Vira thought, my grandson's age - took out a walkie-talkie.

"Poplar, poplar, this is padfoot," he said. "A car is about to come, don't shoot."

Vira raised herself up on her cane and spoke her prayer aloud. "Please do not take my son." In fact, Valeriy Kuksa was her son-in-law, but she called him her son. The Russians were taking her son. The young one raised his gun halfway. "Go back inside grandma," he said. "He is just going to help us push the car out of the driveway."

But they pushed him into the driver's seat of her car and pointed a gun at him, Vira said. She willed Valeriy to look back at her, but he looked straight ahead and drove away from the house and out of her life.

Stop in any village in the region west of Kyiv, where the Russian army terrorised the civilian population for a month, and you will hear a story about someone who vanished. A brother who went to take petrol to a friend and never arrived. A father who left his house on an errand and didn't return. A son who drove away at gunpoint and didn't look back.

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Before the invasion, Maria Sayenko saw her father Mykola all the time - he lived a few houses over in the village of Hurivshchyna and came nearly every day to see her new baby. Then one day early in the Russian occupation he disappeared. "He left home and never came back," Maria said. "And nobody saw him anywhere."

A neighbour said he thought Mykola had gone to the next village on an errand, but he couldn't remember for sure. His house was just as he might have left it to walk to the shops. Maria filed a police report via an automated service online and settled in to wait. All Maria knows is that her father Mykola Medvid, a 56-year-old part-time car mechanic, left his house on 18 or 19 of March and hasn't been to see her baby since.

"We went to the nearby villages and the ones further away," Maria said. "He wasn't at a friend's house, at a checkpoint. Not dead, not alive. It's like he disappeared into thin air."

Stop in any village in the region west of Kyiv, where the Russian army terrorised the civilian population for a month, and you will hear a story about someone who vanished. A brother who went to take petrol to a friend and never arrived. A father who left his house on an errand and didn't return. A son who drove away at gunpoint and didn't look back.

Before the invasion, Maria Sayenko saw her father Mykola all the time - he lived a few houses over in the village of Hurivshchyna and came nearly every day to see her new baby. Then one day early in the Russian occupation he disappeared. "He left home and never came back," Maria said. "And nobody saw him anywhere."

A neighbour said he thought Mykola had gone to the next village on an errand, but he couldn't remember for sure. His house was just as he might have left it to walk to the shops. Maria filed a police report via an automated service online and settled in to wait. All Maria knows is that her father Mykola Medvid, a 56-year-old part-time car mechanic, left his house on 18 or 19 of March and hasn't been to see her baby since.

"We went to the nearby villages and the ones further away," Maria said. "He wasn't at a friend's house, at a checkpoint. Not dead, not alive. It's like he disappeared into thin air."