By Tim Fitzsimons, Gabe Gutierrez and Erika Angulo -
NBC News
An American missionary has been kidnapped by Russian troops in Ukraine since Saturday, according to his relatives, who have not known his whereabouts since then.
Dmitry Bodyu, 50, was a pastor at the Word of Life church in Melitopol, a city of 150,000 in southern Ukraine.
According to his wife, Helen Bodyu,
between eight and 10 Russian soldiers surprised them at their home on Saturday morning
and subdued them.
"They stole our phones, computers, documents... and they took him somewhere. I don't know where," the woman told NBC News.
Bodyu assured that the Russians were not "very aggressive" with them and seemed to know that the pastor was American, separated him from his family to talk to him in the kitchen and took away his passport.
Pastor Dmitry Bodyu, third from left, with his family. Courtesy of the Bodyu family via NBC News
The news was not made public days later when the same Russian soldiers returned the phones to people who had been held incommunicado since Saturday.
Melitopol was one of the first cities to be subdued by Russia since the invasion began a month ago.
Esther Bodyu-Ogawa, one of the pastor's daughters and who lives in Hawaii, said relatives told her the Russians entered the house and
began questioning them. "Are they US citizens?"
That was one of the first questions they were asked, she assured.
[“We will push them back”: how Ukraine continues to fight Russia for control of its main cities]
The man is originally from Moscow but migrated to the United States when he was 17, his wife said, then returned to Crimea and left when Russia annexed the peninsula in 2014.
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The pastor's father, Sergey Bodyu, remains in North Texas and says that every day he is more worried about his son "I don't know where exactly, what is going on," he told the NBC affiliate in Texas.
It is not clear to the family why they took him.
"It could be because we're American citizens. It could be because he's a big
influencer
. A lot of people follow him and he really wants to know what he's preaching and what he's telling people," added his daughter.
[USA. announces plans to receive 100,000 refugees from Ukraine and new sanctions against Russia]
The State Department said it was aware of the reports but, according to NBC News, declined to comment for privacy reasons.
For her part, a spokesman for Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Irene Vereshchuk said her office had no knowledge of the alleged kidnapping.