Volodymyr Semistyaga was wading through documents in the archives of Luhansk University when the stomp of boots interrupted his reading. A group of pro-Russian separatists knocked him down, pulled a sack over his head and dragged him from the building.
It was June 2014 and fighting between Ukrainian government forces and Russian-backed insurgent groups in eastern Ukraine was intensifying. Separatists had claimed independence in the so-called People’s Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk. Increasingly, people were going missing as neighbors turned on one another.
