For nearly four months, the world has watched in horror as Russian forces flattened Ukrainian cities, with images of slaughtered civilians in Bucha and Mariupol attracting international outrage and prompting Western powers to increase their military aid. But all the while a less visible phenomenon was taking place in homes, at checkpoints, during street protests: Russian soldiers were detaining and abducting hundreds — perhaps thousands — of civilians.

All over the country, people are missing. A schoolteacher who refused Russian soldiers’ demands that she speak their language. A volunteer paramedic tending to the injured in the port city of Mariupol. The father of a journalist, taken to blackmail his daughter into providing access to her news outlet’s website. A village leader who was escorted from a government building with a bag over his head. And untold others.

Authorities and human rights advocates say these cases are part of a larger pattern of Russian abductions and disappearances, a military tactic meant to terrorize communities and demoralize civilian resistance.