Anton Gerashchenko
@Gerashchenko_en · 18h
The story of Vladyslav Rudenko, one of the Ukrainian teenagers abducted by Russia.
Russian troops occupied the city of Kherson a week after the full-scale invasion in February 2022. They detained hundreds and tortured dozens of people in the city. Then the Russian authorities began targeting children.
In October 2022, three armed Russian soldiers stormed the home of 16-year-old Vladyslav. They forced him to pack his belongings and board one of 17 buses filled with Ukrainian children. He wasn’t allowed to leave a note for his mother. No phone calls to relatives were permitted.
The buses took him to the camp "Druzhba" ("Friendship") in Russian-occupied Crimea. Upon arrival, Russian officers ordered the children to throw away anything symbolizing Ukrainian identity. Vladyslav recalled one teenage girl who disobeyed and wore a T-shirt that read "Glory to Ukraine." A Russian officer cut the shirt off her.
According to Vladyslav, the children were shown Russian propaganda videos, and given lessons about Moscow’s supposed global importance, how Ukraine would soon become part of Russia, and how their Ukrainian identity was being upgraded" to a Russian one.
This daily dose of propaganda convinced some Ukrainian children that their families no longer wanted them, Vladyslav said. Some even claimed they didn’t want to return home.
Vladyslav refused to accept a Russian identity. One evening at dusk, he sneaked outside, carefully avoiding camp guards, and pulled down the Russian flag.
"For everything Russia did to my mother, to my family, and to me — I just took it down and left my underwear up there instead."
Russian soldiers punished him by placing him in solitary confinement for seven days — a tiny room with a small window. They gave him pills they claimed would "calm him down." Vladyslav flushed them down the toilet.
In the spring, Russian authorities transferred Vladyslav to a military academy. There, along with 800 other Ukrainian boys, he was trained to handle weapons, operate drones, and drive tanks. The officers tried to turn them into Russian soldiers.
Before Vladyslav could be sent to the battlefield, his mother began working with the Save Ukraine organization. They developed a rescue plan that involved gathering numerous documents required by Russian authorities to prove parental rights and traveling thousands of miles — from Ukraine’s eastern border to Poland, then north to Belarus, through Russia, and southwest to Lazurne in occupied part of Ukraine.
When Vladyslav’s mother arrived at the military camp, Russian officials interrogated her for three days, threatening her with 25 years in prison.
Russian officers demanded that mother and son record an interview in which they expressed support for the Russian occupation and claimed they were afraid to return to Ukraine — a fabricated lie used as a condition for their release.
Vladyslav and his mother returned home to Kherson in May 2023, seven months after the teenager’s abduction, and six months after Ukrainian forces liberated the city from Russian control.
There is no way to know exactly how many children Russians have abducted from Ukraine. The Ukrainian government estimates about 20,000 have been taken. Russia places the number much higher — claiming 700,000, insisting these aren’t abductions, though, but humanitarian efforts, offering children a reprieve from war. Some were supposedly going to summer camps but then didn’t return to their parents.
Russian families have illegally adopted some of the children.
The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab has identified more than 8,400 children living in at least 57 locations scattered across occupied Ukrainian territory, Russia, and Belarus. Some are in Russian military training centers — or worse, fighting.
https://x.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1939572503359152270
