Children of War / Children's Stories

Source: Children of War

CHILDREN'S
STORIES
In this section, you will find stories of children who have suffered as a result of full-scale war: those who were wounded, killed, abducted, or detained by Russian military personnel and representatives of the occupying authorities. This section also includes stories about the successful return of children and their reunification with their families after being illegally deported to Russia and the Republic of Belarus or forcibly displaced to the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine.

Vlad, 19, who was forcibly taken by the Russians to a military college, returned to Ukraine in 2024

During the occupation of Kherson, Russian soldiers began searching for families with children who were not enrolled in local schools. Vlad’s mother initially hid him and the other children at home. One day, armed Russian soldiers entered the house while Vlad was alone—they forced him to pack his belongings and follow them—to an unknown destination and for an unknown period of time.
Vlad was moved between camps in Yevpatoria and Lazurne. There, he was punished for protesting—specifically, for taking down the Russian flag—and was even placed in solitary confinement. He also witnessed other children being humiliated, beaten, and forced to film apologies.
After the de-occupation of Kherson, Vlad’s mother, Tetyana, reported him missing and turned to the organization Save Ukraine for help. To reach the occupied territory, she had to travel through Poland, Belarus, and Russia. Before Vlad was released, Tetyana was subjected to an FSB interrogation—involving lengthy questioning and spending the night in appalling conditions. She later learned that her rescue plan might have been betrayed.
Vlada and his mother were finally released only after they recorded a video praising Russia. Their documents and phones were returned to them, and after a twelve-hour wait at the border, they were allowed to leave.

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Kira, 14, from Mariupol, witnessed her father’s death and was forcibly taken away by the Russians.

Kiri was only 11 years old when Russia’s full-scale invasion began. Until February 24, 2022, her life was filled with laughter and dreams. She lived in Mariupol with her father, went to school, and spent carefree days with her friends. But the war destroyed everything. Watch the story of a child who faced horrors that no one should ever have to endure.

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Artem, 16, Kharkiv region. Abducted by Russia at the age of 16.

At age 16, Artem’s life was turned upside down by a full-scale war. Living with his parents in a small village near Kharkiv, he attended school online due to constant shelling. But when it was time to pick up his 9th-grade diploma, he had no choice but to travel to his school in the neighboring city of Kupiansk. He could never have imagined that this seemingly ordinary trip would separate him from his family for more than half a year. Ahead of him lay the grueling ordeal of forced displacement, inhumane living conditions, and constant psychological pressure from the Russians—a test of resilience that no child should ever have to endure.

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Ilya, age 11, Mariupol

Ilya is a child who has endured a great deal of suffering in his short life. When his hometown of Mariupol was mercilessly shelled by the Russians, his mother was killed by shrapnel, and the boy sustained numerous shrapnel wounds. The occupiers took him to a hospital in Donetsk, where he endured even more physical and emotional pain. The surgery to remove shrapnel from his leg—he was 9 years old at the time—was performed without anesthesia. Adults mocked him, saying that now the child should say not “Glory to Ukraine,” but “Glory to Ukraine as part of Russia,” and forced him to write in Russian. But despite his young age, the boy bravely endured all this abuse. Thanks to a large team of governmental and nongovernmental agencies and organizations, working closely with the boy’s grandmother, Olena, Ilya was successfully brought back from deportation. The boy is currently undergoing rehabilitation and dreams of becoming a doctor “to be just like our guys on the front lines right now—combat medics and ordinary soldiers—they are true heroes.”

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Sasha, age 7, Odessa

Seven-year-old Sasha is one of more than a thousand children who have been injured as a result of Russia’s military actions on Ukrainian territory. An enemy missile struck the house where the girl lived with her parents. Sasha was taken to a local hospital with multiple injuries, but the doctors’ prognosis was grim—the child had to have her lower limb amputated. What followed were seven months of rehabilitation, two prosthetics, and much more pain and tears. But even that didn’t stop the girl from doing what she loves most—practicing gymnastics. However, as Sasha’s mother admits, life now is a constant struggle that remains off-camera and without awards.

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Andriy, Brovary

In the very first days of the full-scale invasion, he left Brovary with his parents and headed for the Chernihiv region. On the way, they encountered a column of Russian military tanks. One of the armored personnel carriers crushed the car in which the boy’s entire family was traveling. Upon realizing that the boy was still alive, the occupiers pulled him out of the car and left him on the side of the road. Then, right in front of him, they shot at the car’s gas tank. Andriyko is certain that his mother was alive in the car because he saw no wounds on her face or body. Unfortunately, the boy still cannot come to terms with the fact that his parents are dead. Andriyko now lives in Brovary with his older sister, who has taken custody of him.

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Bogdan, age 8, Bakhmut

His parents were killed by an enemy shell right on a city street. The boy’s mother was seven months pregnant at the time. Bohdan was staying with a neighbor, and when everyone had fallen asleep, he took his bike in the middle of the night and rode to the site of that terrible event to see his parents. His little heart refused to believe that his mom and dad were gone. His parents’ bodies remained lying on the street for several days; due to constant shelling, it was impossible to bury them right away. Bogdan was rescued by law enforcement officers. They came to the boy, gathered his belongings, evacuated him from the conflict zone, fed him, and kept him entertained. The boy was terrified and distraught by the news of his parents’ deaths.

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Dima and Anya, age 12, from the village of Yagidne in the Chernihiv District

Dima and Anya, from the village of Yagidne in the Chernihiv region, are friends and neighbors. They were among the 380 people whom the occupiers herded together and held captive in a basement. “Yagidne is a small village; there are five streets there, and everyone knows each other,” says Anya. “There were only three kids in my class,” adds Dima.
The Russians set up their headquarters in the local school, herding all the village residents into its basement. The 380 people spent 28 days in the cramped basement without being able to move around freely. “They enjoyed it when they shot at us and we were scared.”
Instead of a bathroom, there was just one bucket for everyone. On the wall, they wrote a list of people who had died from suffocation or been shot. Dima’s mother approached the Russians and begged them to either give her a piece of bread or shoot her. It was unbearable to watch her children starve. Now Anya and Dima are learning to face their fears and dream. Dima wants to become a photographer, and Anya wants to join the military.

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Margarita, Mariupol

"I'm talking to my dad through the window. He can hear me, right?" Margo, from Mariupol, lost almost all of her loved ones in an instant: her father, brother, two grandmothers, an uncle, and her godparents. Of the 12 people who were in the private home that was hit by a shell, only three survived. “I was in shock, but I didn’t cry.” Margarita has undergone rehabilitation, knows what helps her feel calm, talks to psychologists like an adult, and dreams of becoming a detective. She remembers “Veselka” Park in Mariupol, where it was always fun. She remembers how her grandmother taught her to read. And although neither her hometown nor her loved ones can wrap Margot in their embrace, she wishes for other Ukrainian children to be happy and to keep on living.

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Saveliy, age 10, Irpin

Saveliy is 10 years old. A year ago, he lost his father in the war; his father had volunteered to defend his hometown. Saveliy’s uncle and brother went to the front with his father. “My mom and I were hiding in the garage, watching the rockets fly from Bucha to Irpin and from Irpin to Bucha.” One day, Saveliy and his mom got a call from his brother. “He said, ‘I’m wounded, my uncle is wounded, and as for Dad…’ I figured out on my own that Dad had been killed.” They couldn’t retrieve Savelii’s father’s body for 10 days because of the heavy fighting. “As a child, I wanted to be a dentist or a doctor. But now, after my father died, I’ve decided to join the military.” We can’t change these children’s past, but our future lies with them.

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Re-education of Children in Camps (Occupied Crimea)

The Russians were taking children out of Kherson under the guise of a health retreat. Parents were forced to send their children to the camp, having been promised a trip lasting only two weeks. Dozens of buses traveled to occupied Crimea. According to eyewitness accounts, there were thousands of children in just three camps—“Mriya,” “Druzhba,” and “Promenisty.” In September and October 2022, Vitaliy, Zhenya, Taya, Dayana, and two other girls—who asked that their names not be disclosed—arrived for the so-called health retreat. They describe how Russians at the camp mocked the children and humiliated them on the basis of their nationality. Those who expressed pro-Ukrainian views were locked in the basement or in isolation. The children were forbidden from speaking Ukrainian; instead, they were forced to listen to the Russian national anthem, learn Russian patriotic songs, and work. For at least half a year, they were lied to—told that their biological parents had abandoned them and that, in general, Ukraine no longer needed them. It is currently unknown exactly how many abducted children remain on the occupied peninsula.

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Vitaliy, 14, village of Kyselivka, Kherson District

Vitaliy, 14, and his 27-year-old uncle Oleksiy were taken captive in September 2022 when they went for a walk in their home village of Kyselivka, in the Kherson region. The Russians, who intercepted the boys on the road, first beat them and took off their shoes so they couldn’t escape; then threw them into a pit filled with entrails, threatened to throw a grenade in and bury them there, or shoot them, all the while humiliating both the teenager and the adult man. In the FSB torture chamber, the relatives were separated; both were starved and interrogated. Vitaliy was taken to a small, cold shower room in the basement, where more than 10 other detained Ukrainians were being held. The young man saw and heard how the Russians were tormenting the other men. They returned from the torture chamber half-alive and covered in blood. When his parents saw Vitaliy and his uncle after their release, the men were terribly thin. Vitaliy’s 27-year-old uncle, Oleksiy, returned home with gray hair.

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Vladislav, 16, Melitopol

Vlad was held captive for a full 90 days: from April to July 2022. He was detained during the evacuation of civilians through the so-called “humanitarian corridor” from Melitopol to Zaporizhzhia. The Russians put him in solitary confinement and forced him to clean a blood-soaked torture chamber. During his entire time in captivity, Vlad had only one cellmate, a 24-year-old man. When, a few days later, the young man decided to take his own life due to the torture and slit his wrists, Vlad had to come to terms internally with the suicide he had witnessed, while outwardly reassuring the Ukrainian man, as if helping him “pass away.” According to Vlad, by the time the first month had passed since his detention, his hope of leaving the detention center alive had faded. At the time of his capture, the young man was only 16 years old.

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Sashko, age 12, Mariupol

The Russians took 12-year-old Sasha and his mother, Snizhana, prisoner in Mariupol in March 2022. At the filtration camp, they were separated without being allowed to say goodbye to each other. Sasha, who had suffered an eye injury, was sent to a hospital. Later, they were told he would be placed in an orphanage until he was adopted by a Russian family. However, thanks to the boy’s courage, the efforts of his grandmother Lyudmila, and the coordinated work of a large team of government and nongovernmental agencies and organizations, he was successfully returned to territory controlled by Ukraine. The fate of Sasha’s mother remains unknown.

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This is an automatic translation generated by DeepL.