Construction worker Yuri Galitsky has gone missing after traveling to a building site in Krasnodar, prompting police and rescue volunteers to launch a search in southern Russia.
The 30-year-old last made contact with his family on August 11, after which his mobile phone was switched off and all communication stopped, according to Telegram news channel Baza.
Baza, a popular Russian online news outlet that reports on law enforcement and emergency incidents, stated that Galitsky had traveled from Adler to Krasnodar for work. Adler is a Black Sea resort district within the city of Sochi, while Krasnodar serves as the administrative capital of Krasnodar Krai in southwestern Russia.
Galitsky's mother, who resides in the town of Tikhoretsk northeast of Krasnodar, alerted law enforcement after failing to reach her son. Police in Tikhoretsk received the initial missing person report before transferring the file to police colleagues in Krasnodar for further investigation.
Fake hostel address and labor slavery concerns
Before his departure, Galitsky gave his mother the address of a workers' hostel, described as a labor house, where he was scheduled to stay while working at the construction site. Informal labor houses in Russia offer temporary housing and meals to migrant laborers in exchange for physical work, but checks at the given address revealed that no worker accommodation existed at the location.
Family members noted that while Galitsky had frequently traveled to other regions for temporary construction jobs in the past, he was visiting this specific site in Krasnodar for the first time.
Galitsky's relatives suspect he may have fallen victim to labor slavery. Krasnodar Krai and other regions in southern Russia have repeatedly appeared in police bulletins over cases where workers were trapped on agricultural farms or private construction sites and forced to work without documents or wages.
Volunteer search and missing person cases
Volunteers from LizaAlert, a non-governmental search and rescue organization that coordinates missing person searches across Russia, have joined the police effort. Krasnodar police are currently conducting official checks into the disappearance.
The case follows other recent missing person reports published in Russian media, including the disappearance of 29-year-old Moscow resident Yevgeniya. She vanished after divorcing her husband and flying to the island of Phuket in Thailand, having previously left her career as a dentist to pursue Tarot card reading.
