The Russian Red Cross (RRC), Russia's oldest humanitarian organization, has helped to find more than 100 people as part of the Restoring Family Links program (RFL) since last February. The hotline is available at 8 800 700 44 50 (free call) throughout Russia.
The Russian Red Cross RFL Hotline for victims of the Ukrainian crisis operates throughout Russia daily fr om 10:00 to 19:00 Moscow time. E-mail: rfl@redcross.ru.
"Now due to the Ukrainian crisis many people are unable to contact their family members for various reasons, including damaged communications, lack of means of communication and other reasons. Therefore, the Russian Red Cross began actively developing efforts to restore family links, and since last February we have helped 102 people to reunite with their families and loved ones. We also help people in different Russian regions to buy tickets and arrange transportation. Twenty-four people have already received such support and several more requests are being processed," said Pavel Savchuk, President of the Russian Red Cross.
According to the RRC President, the Russian Red Cross Tracing and Information Center takes requests to search for missing civilians.
"Sometimes citizens of Ukraine also call our hotline. They stay in Ukraine and know for sure that their relatives arrived in Russia, but for some reason they lost contact with them," Pavel Savchuk noted.
Anatoly from Mariupol was looking for his relatives. He shared his story with us.
"Before I called the Russian Red Cross, I contacted various agencies, and I was advised to contact you. I described to the Russian Red Cross hotline operator who I was looking for, and about a month later they called me and told me they had found my relative. We have not met yet, she is now in the Lipetsk region, but we are constantly in touch, we call each other," he said.
Since February, specialists of the Russian Red Cross Search and Information Center have improved the algorithm for accepting requests for tracing, by way of protecting personal data. After receiving the request, RRC specialists process them together with regional branches and the Central Tracing Agency (CTA) of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), wh ere requests from all over the world are collected in a unified database. In addition, they check whether the missing persons have been evacuated to Russia by comparing lists of missing persons against lists of those who have received humanitarian assistance from the RRC, and contacting the Ministry of Emergency Situations and temporary accommodation points, if the applicants are unable to do so themselves.
Also, if applicants are unable to use social media on their own, RRC specialists provide them with access to the Internet.
"Most often, such support to people arriving in Russia is provided at points of operational assistance, for example, at the mobile point of the Russian Red Cross in Belgorod. There, refugees can also be provided with a phone to contact their relatives," said Pavel Savchuk.
Search for people uses technology introduced by colleagues from the ICRC. For instance, after a person is found, RRC staff contacts the person and clarifies whether he or she is looking for relatives and whether he or she knows the applicant. Only after that, contacts are exchanged between the person found and the applicant.
Volunteers of the Russian Red Cross also help in searching for people. Most often volunteers are involved when it is necessary to go to a place or check something personally.
"For example, in Tatarstan, volunteers went to a temporary accommodation point and accidentally met there a person they were looking for. Earlier, one of the volunteers remembered the last name from the list of those searched for, and it was this volunteer with a good memory who was approached by the woman the applicants were looking for," said the RRC President.
