No luggage, no clothes. Isn’t there any goodbye? Without warning. His name is Artem Rachkovskyy, he is Ukrainian, but everyone in Chiclana knows him as Arturo. “This is the Spanish translation,” explains his mother, Clara. Artu, ‘Arturito’, left his home in Chiclana de la Frontera (Cádiz). May 13, 2022. “13… is a number I’m really scared of anyway,” Clara laments. “My son disappeared on that fateful 13th day, but… I really don’t know what happened.”
After months of waiting for a signal, Clara speaks to CASO ABIERTO, Prensa Ibérica’s incident and investigation portal. Days pass and the woman copes as best she can: “I work hard, I’d rather be busy…”, trying to camouflage her pain. “A long time without knowing anything… We had a very good relationship with Artu. We were so close, I don’t know what to think anymore.” Clara has been living without her son, unanswered, unannounced, since May 13. I stopped being there a year and a half ago.
“We’ll meet at six o’clock”
“I remember that day very well, the last one…” her mother begins. “I was going to work.” Arturo was in his room. His day didn’t look like it would be any different from any other., “wake up, go to the gym…”. There were no signs, no indication that the farewell would be final. “Nothing, everything is normal.” Arturo was going through a period of change, “He had broken up with his girlfriend and he wasn’t doing well, he was in a lot of pain but to think he was going to disappear was nothing.” Exercising made him feel better, filling up his schedule a bit. His mother, his axis of strength, encouraged him to move forward every day. “Artu has not had an easy life, the truth is, but he is strong, he has always fought everything.”
“I’m going to work now.” His mother kissed him and said something to him before leaving. Arturo’s aunt came from somewhere Ukraine in war, had found a job caring for an elderly person in Spain: “He’ll arrive around six. We’ll pick him up from the bus station.” Arthur nodded. He said he would be there. Did not come.
“I started calling him at six o’clock in the afternoon and his phone was off,” his mother said. Clara picked up her old sister-in-law from the bus stop. When he got home, Arturo wasn’t there. The stimulation hadn’t stopped completely yet, all his belongings were there. Even though he was lost, he looked calm.
His mother says, “The last message Artu wrote is from Portugal.”
Restless but still calm, Clara tried to find an explanation. Maybe Artu had gone out with a friend or found a job, recently doing repairs as a bricklayer. I was online on Facebook in the morning. He shared a post at 10 p.m. This was a text that talked about strength and resistance. Phoenix’s legend: “There comes a stage in life where you have to be reborn… so get up and start flying…”. At 21:00 in the evening, Clara’s phone rang.. “It was a message from him. He told me: ‘I won’t be around for a few days, don’t worry. I love you, mom.’”
A day passed, a week passed. It was not an ordinary thing for his son. “She’s very motherly…” Clara was worried. Absence has been extended to one month. “I had no idea, there was no way to find out about it.” Went to the police station: Artem Rachkovskyy, 33 years old. Chiclana de la Frontera, Cadiz. “I was waiting for him to come back, but I couldn’t take it anymore.” Slim build, green eyes, brown hair. He was wearing long black sports pants, a green short-sleeved T-shirt, a black hat and white Nike sneakers. Clara filed a missing person report.
Call forwarding: still active
Unanswered. No signal. Arturo’s mobile phone was always off: “There was no way, the answering machine was always off.” The phone bill (Arturo’s line is in the same package as Clara’s) “I had strayed into another trick that no one knew about.” He showed this too”“The last message Artu wrote came from Portugal”. “A new phone number, a message from Portugal… We have no contact there,” Clara told police. The new line, which is active as of the date of this publication, shows certain movementsshort calls, but every time Clara tries to call it goes to voicemail.
‘In prison’, ‘they killed’
The search alarm started ringing immediately. The first posters were created as a warning of getting lost. The woman suffers: “After all, Chiclana is not big, but small, and everyone started talking.” Rumors, not clues, painted all kinds of scenes: “They started talking about drugs and crime, ya My son drowned…“, repeats Clara. An additional pain to the pain of being lost. “They talked about prisons in Morocco, in Portugal…”.
The National Police contacted their Portuguese counterparts and “there was no record of Arturo being in any prison or police station there.” The same thing happened in Morocco. “The agents told me there was no news of him in El Estrecho, and if that were the case they would have known.” They ruled out enforced disappearance“and they rule out the presence of any signs of crime.” The main hypothesis is voluntary walking. “That would be for the best…” Clara thinks out loud, “I just hope to God that he’s alive, that he’s well… but the truth is, I’m very surprised that he hasn’t contacted me. It’s been a long time and our time together was beautiful.”
Before she disappeared, she and her mother tried to collect medicines to send to her home country, Ukraine, to help war victims.
Arturo came to Spain when he was 9 years old, today he is 35, he disappeared at the age of 33. “We don’t know if he’s okay…” Police still open case but no leads. “Investigators told me the alert was also activated at Interpol.” Clara thinks out loud: “Portugal? If she went, if it was a trip, she’d take something with her… right?” Dial that phone again. number added as an additional line to your contract after your son disappeared: “no answer”. Once again. His daily life turns into waiting.
“Work helps me endure everything. Arturo is also very hardworking. Everyone who starts does their best. While he was a bricklayer, a cake maker, a carpenter… he learned quickly. Moreover, he is nervous, he was not unemployed for long, he always found something to do.”
For a year and a half did not contact anyone. He did not open his social networks. You did not use WhatsApp. Clara asked, “Where are you, son?” he repeats. Everyone is waiting for an answer, but it doesn’t come. And they look at their networks that are not updated. With the release of Phoenix on May 13 at 10.13, photos of many drugs are also featured. In recent months, he and Clara have worked hard to collect medicines and send them to other countries. Ukraine, your country, has been at war since February 2022. “The truth is that Artu is a very good child, with a good heart.” Clara finds another photo: “Like at home, nowhere,” she had shared in April. Arturo, they are waiting for you there.