Ukrainian teenager Denys has described how, in the autumn of 2022, Russian troops stopped him and his father on a street in Kherson and forcibly removed them through Oleshky and Dzhankoi to Krasnodar region. He says people had their phones confiscated, were made to give personal data, fingerprints, saliva and blood samples, and were then moved between boarding houses guarded by armed soldiers.
“We immediately decided that we would try to get back to Ukraine. But first we had to earn money for the trip,” Denys recalls.
At the beginning of 2023, he says, temporary identity papers were replaced with Russian passports, even though neither he nor his father had applied for citizenship. Daria Kasianova, head of the board of the Ukrainian Child Rights Network, says imposing citizenship is part of Russia’s policy toward removed Ukrainians.
Denys and his father tried to save money to return, moved from place to place, worked informally on construction sites and, according to the teenager, faced insults and threats. They later tried to reach Ukrainian-controlled territory through the Vasylivka area, but at a checkpoint, Denys says, they were beaten and threatened with death.
After that, they went back to Krasnodar region. There, through relatives, Denys managed to get word to his mother that he was alive. She turned to volunteers from the network, who arranged the route home: the teenager traveled via Minsk to Kyiv, while his father was helped to leave Belarus for Europe.
Kasianova says returning one child usually costs up to $1,500, with the expenses covered by international organizations. At the time of publication, the article says, Ukraine had managed to bring back 1,791 children, although the statistics do not separately show how many were taken to Russia and how many were moved within occupied territories.