The story of a woman from Kherson who returned her 15-year-old daughter from the Russian Federation

Kherson resident Svitlana managed to return her 15-year-old daughter Alina from Russia, who was taken to the territory of the aggressor country by her best friend’s mother.

The Guardian tells the story of Alina and Svetlana.

Mother and daughter lived in Kherson when Russian troops entered there. The mother of Alina’s best friend, Evgenia, was pro-Russian, and she managed to pull the teenager over to her side.

At first, Evgenia insisted that Alina and her family receive humanitarian aid from the occupiers. Then, when Ukrainian troops were approaching the city, the woman said that they would punish anyone who came into contact with the Russians.

So when Evgenia offered to run away to Russia, the frightened Alina agreed.

“This woman lied to Alina. She told her: “Because you communicated with Russian soldiers during the occupation and took food and water, Ukrainian soldiers will torture and kill you after liberation. We need to escape because we are in danger.” – says Svitlana.

The mother tried to convince her daughter to stay, but she stole her birth certificate and went to Russia with Evgenia in October 2022. Alina was taken to a village 1.5 thousand km from her native home.

When Svitlana contacted her daughter using a messenger, the child cried. According to the girl, Evgenia took her to Russia in order to receive payments from local social services. When the woman found out that Alina was talking to her mother, she took her phone and hit her.

To get her daughter back, Svitlana went to Russia via Poland and Belarus. She came to the village where Alina was taken. There she found out that Evgenia sent the girl to a rehabilitation center, and she herself was already preparing documents for adoption.

However, Svitlana managed to pick up her daughter before she received a Russian birth certificate.

“We do not know how many children were actually taken to the Russian Federation. These are not only homeless children who were sent to camps in Russia, and children kidnapped from boarding schools and orphanages. In some cases, it is about children who were in the occupied territories, and the rest of their families remained in the territories controlled by Ukraine, and these families lost contact with their children.” – says former children’s ombudsman Mykola Kuleba, who currently manages the “Save Ukraine” rescue network.

According to Kuleba, he heard about other cases when Ukrainian children were taken from the Russian Federation for financial gain.

“One boy we rescued from a Russian school said he was with another boy from Mariupol who fell into a very poor alcoholic family. He was ignored and was hungry every day.” – says Kuleba.

We will remind the Ukrainian data collection system officially recorded the deportation of 16,221 children from Ukraine to Russia.

Read also: “Help me”. The story of the deportation of a teenager who managed to return to Ukraine