Just on any potential suggestions on what's a good plot to explore there? I know that the criminal underground is thriving with smuggling and other activities thanks to lack of gov't control.
Haven't figured out on what's a good motive for kidnapping someone. Unless person has relatives in a major country like the US...
There was no kidnapping - it was a ruse to get Thrillcop into the region, where he becomes a target for inhuman experimentation.
The fun kind. The Shocker kind.
Thrillcop is able to break free before they can really get to work on him, and struggles to bring that branch of the organization down as a normal human.
Bait-and-Switch huh? That's an interesting twist, though I don't know if I'll explore that.
Besides. The protagonist will blame that person for dragging his sorry ass to Donbass.
Actually the idea is a thriller, which starts after the ex-cop infiltrates the eastern part of Ukraine to find the missing person. And then he finds out that the missing person is at the tip of the iceberg since the pro-Russian separatists want to do something that would tip the scales in their favor.
Or the other idea is to rescue the person and have a long journey back to Kiev-controlled territory where both characters have much Character Development. I need to figure out this one, but the ex-cop was from a prominent family who's a Black Sheep because he didn't want to get involved in it and wants to make a name for himself in another field.

Probably one of the first ones I had in mind.
Basic story is that there's a police officer who was forced to leave over an incident, being made a scapegoat. He later gets hired as a law enforcement analyst while helping investigate things for people when hired as a side job...
Then he's approached by someone he knows and mentions that a relative of his disappeared from somewhere in Central Europe and the trail leads to eastern Ukraine. Since his government doesn't allow negotiations for eventual ransom, the ex-cop gets hired to go there and see if she's still alive. Though the trail leads to something bigger.
Of course the thing so secretive, the officer has no choice but to rely on contacts he made as an analyst, like that nice old Russian arms dealer.