Farmer Volodmr Sanin started to worry about the isolation of his village when Russian soldiers were interested in his 16-year-old adopted son. “From the first days of the war we were cut off from all of Ukraine,” he explains. “The Russians occupied the territory and cut off communication lines. There were no connections, no delivery to supermarkets and it was impossible to withdraw money at ATMs.”
What a violent reaction could cause the occupancy forces that had been rolled in his community in the Kharkiv Oblast region in Ukraine was unclear. But so far the family -adopted policy of the family was effective.
“We didn’t let our children go anywhere to attract attention,” he adds. “We were afraid that our adopted children would be removed because they would say that we have no rights to them according to Russian law.”
But it is not easy to keep teenagers inside at all times, and in the end it became impossible to prevent his son from entering the village to meet friends.
Against the Express for the launch of our most important new campaign, giving back the stolen children, Volodmr continues: “He would go to the center, where a small field is and played football. He gradually started tackling differently and told me that he had ‘new friends’. One day he went out and did not return all night.”
By the time his son came home one evening and smoked cigarettes, Volodmr, 56, a father of 16 adopted and two biological children, and his wife Halyna, 57, realized that he was cared for by the Russian soldiers.
“I started to think he was brainwashed and we could do nothing,” he explains. “The Russian soldiers gave him alcohol and we were worried if we upset my son, he might say something about the location of his brother in the Ukrainian army.”
After having spoken hard about Russia, the teenager’s insults about the despotic regime of Vladimir Putin abruptly stopped.
One evening there was a knock on the door that changed the life of Volodmr forever. “Three soldiers with automatic guns came to us and told us to transfer my son’s passport. They said our son was going to Russia to study and play football. We were afraid of the other children and thought we had no choice but to let him go.”
It would be the last time that they would see the 16-year-old almost a year.
The experiences of Volodymr are not unique. Since Putin Ukraine invaded three years ago, children have been kidnapped by Russia on an industrial scale. There are currently 35,000 independently verified cases of kidnapping of children sponsored by the State, although figures are probably much higher, given how little is known about the 1.6 million young people who keep effectively imprisoned in occupied territories.
Some children are lured to Russian controlled areas based on the promise of a fun adventure. Many parents let their children travel to holiday camps, which they believed would offer relief due to the stress of life under occupation. In fact, they were used to steal their young people.
Contact with that kidnapped varies. Some families are completely cut off.
Fortunately for Volodmr, who felt completely betrayed, his son continued to speak with one of his brothers and sisters. But it soon became clear that his son did not studied or played football – he scribbled around for work to pay for food. While his situation deteriorated, he begged to talk to his father. The teenager said he was scared and wanted to come back to Ukraine. At school he had refused to sing the Russian national anthem and was reprimanded for it.
Volodmer started looking for a way to help his son escape, a search that became more urgent when it appeared, there were plans to register in a Russian military school. Once through those doors it would be almost impossible for him to escape. He would return to Ukraine – but as a Russian soldier with orders to kill his countrymen.
Wanned desperately to save his son from this fate, Volodymr turned to the only available option – he made contact with Save Ukraine. Founded 11 years ago, in the early days of the conflict in the east of the country, the charity specialized in saving children abducted by Russia and supporting families affected by the disappearances. The daring missions in enemy territory have reduced 793 kidnapped young people to date, but there is hardly any time in the day to tackle the hundreds of cases that are reported to them in the course of a 24 -hour period.
The extent of the problem is clear in the KYIV offices of the organization, where a gigantic map of the country with pins and rope emphasizes the areas where stolen children are supposed to have been concentrated in concentrated the front lines in Russian controlled areas. Staring to the confused mass of red and yellow, except Ukraine’s Chief Legal Officer Myroslava Kharchenko’s hand vibrates with emotion.
“At the moment I am drinking coffee here, talking to you, but I know that is where a child has not seen his mother for three years,” she says. “Maybe they live with a Russian family and they are mistreated. They can be bullied at school only because they are a Ukrainian child.
“I am constantly looking for tools, for ways to convey information or to facilitate others to help.
“But I have a sense of collapse because everything we do, everything that Ukraine does, it’s not enough. I know countless stories about what happens to them, when they are deported, and I can’t change it.”
Myoslava says that in more than ten years after dealing with this issue, except that Ukraine has discovered evidence that kidnapping from children are a calculated strategy that comes from the top. “This is what Putin wants,” she explains. “We work closely with the Ukraine and Foreign Intelligence Security Service. We have carried out studies that have given us sufficient information to say that this is a planned operation.
“They know exactly what they do to these children – they let them do without mothers, fathers without support. They know how to break their psyche, to use propaganda to erase the Ukrainian in them and to replace it with a Russian identity. Putin wants our boys to be real target.
The son of Volodymr was one of those who were destined to wear a Russian uniform until Save Ukraine devised a plan to help him escape. Days before he started the military school, the boy traveled to the border, where he met a modest older lady and her grandson who would take him back to Ukraine. When they were stopped by Russian troops on the border, the other boy lost his nerve and flipped out that they were not actually related. The son of Volodymr was taken to a processing facility where he was beaten and questioned.
But with a bit of luck he was imprisoned on the day of the mercenary and the former Putin -loyalist who was pronounced Yevgeny Prigozhin, started marching on Moscow. The news led to confusion in the military outpost and the teenager was wrongly released. Bruised from the beating, but determined to get home, he was able to return to the Ukrainian territory.
Volodymr and Halyna hurried to meet him in Kiev. It was 11 months since he was taken and they were desperate to see their son. Between the hugs and tears he told them that he was sorry that he was leaving, but they understood. He was a victim …
“It is a situation that we want to place behind us,” Volodymr adds tired, “I think my son is fine. I trust him.”
Since returning to his family, the boy, now 19, has chosen to hire the people who have stolen him. He was recruited in the Ukrainian army and fights in the front line against Russia. Volodmr understands that he is one of the lucky ones who had their children return. He often thinks of the local orphanage, where he and his wife promoted children, which was emptied by the Russian army.
“The decision to take these children is a war crime,” he says. “They are disconnected from home, from the life they used to live and their school. Children need communication. They cut off their support networks is a terrible attack.”
More information about Save Ukraine’s work on savukrainaua.org. Visit: To help Ukrainian children rebuild their lives: https: // give. classy.org/campaign/585068/donateOr e -Mail: help@saveukrainineus.org
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