Three children brought back from occupation to Ukraine, one of them stopped speaking after Russian threats

Ukraine has brought back three more children from Russian-occupied territories: a son of a Ukrainian soldier, a teenage girl and a young child. They are now safe.

Source: Bring Kids Back UA, an initiative for bringing back deported Ukrainian children

Details: One of the children, five-year-old Ivan, is the son of a Ukrainian soldier. Following threats from the Russians, he stopped speaking.

Quote: "Repeated searches and threats with weapons from Russian soldiers traumatised the boy so severely that he stopped speaking. For more than a year, he was unable to say even the word ‘mum’."

Details: Later, the threats from the Russian military escalated: they warned the family they would be executed if they refused to take Russian passports. Ivan’s mother and grandmother then decided to flee the occupied territory.

Another child rescued from occupation is a young girl named Svitlana. When she turned one, Russian soldiers took her father in for interrogation, during which they tortured him and threatened the family. The family was then forced to leave their home.

After relocating, they were again subjected to a search. Occupation forces confiscated all their communication devices and documents.

Quote: "When the occupation authorities learned the girl still had a Ukrainian birth certificate, they threatened her mother, saying the child would be taken away and placed in an orphanage." 

More details: The third child that was brought back is 13-year-old Oksana. Her father feared that Russian forces would take her at one of the checkpoints.

"Our team had to find the safest possible way to evacuate the child," the volunteers added.

As of March 2025, a total of 1,247 children have been brought back to Ukraine.

"At least 1.6 million remain under Russian control. If this is ignored, Russia will raise a generation of Ukrainians it will use as a weapon against freedom and European security. We must do everything to prevent this," said Daria Zarivna, Director of the Bring Kids Back UA initiative.

Background: Earlier, Ukrainska Pravda shared the story of 16-year-old Vlad, who was abducted from Kherson by Russian forces and sent to a so-called "re-education camp". The boy resisted in every possible way and once removed a Russian flag from a flagpole and replaced it with his underwear.

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