In March 2022, due to constant shelling, Oksana and Serhii Dorokhov were staying in the basement of their own house in Irpin (Kyiv region). They did not dare to leave as they had heard stories of cars shot at by occupiers, in which entire families perished. They had a generator and a well at home, so other residents of the war-torn city came to them for water. On 10 March 2022, Oksana managed to reach volunteers engaged in evacuating civilians from the combat zone. They reported that an evacuation under the supervision of the Red Cross was planned, and everyone willing could join the column. When the Dorokhovs arrived at the announced gathering point, it turned out that the Russian military refused to let anyone out. On his own, Serhii managed to take his wife through the checkpoints and put her on an evacuation bus to Kyiv, while he returned to Irpin. On 15 March, he reported that the occupiers had begun to go from house to house. Russian soldiers asked him for documents and asked him to hand the dwelling over to them. The next day, Oksana was unable to reach Serhii by phone. A few days later, she went to Irpin to find her husband. When Oksana entered the house, she saw the door wide open and evidence that Russian soldiers had been living there for some time. Without finding her husband, she returned to Kyiv. At the end of March, Russian troops left the Kyiv region.

On 26 April 2022, citing data from the Red Cross, Ukrainian authorities reported that Serhii was in Russian captivity. At first, he was held in a basement and then transferred to Hostomel airport in the Kyiv region, where other Ukrainians were also held. Later, they were all transported through Belarus to Pre-Trial Detention Centre No. 2 in Novozybkov (Bryansk region). There, prisoners were subjected to brutal violence and humiliation. It was not until in January 2023 that Oksana learned from one of the released prisoners of war that her husband was being held in Pre-Trial Detention Centre No. 2 in Novozybkov. From another released prisoner in June of the same year, she learned that Serhii had been placed in penal colony No. 1 in the town of Donskoy, Tula region. There are known cases of torture and ill-treatment in this colony: prisoners have had the letter Z scratched into their skin with a rusty nail, and are subjected to torture by electric shocks and starvation. In August 2023, Oksana was given a letter from Serhii in which he confirmed he was alive. His current whereabouts are unknown. Dorokhov suffers from critical weight loss and deteriorating general health due to poor nutrition and detention conditions.

In December 2022, the Russian Ministry of Defence, in response to inquiries, reported that Dorokhov had been detained "for opposing the SVO" (the so-called "special military operation").