Family rescued from forced separation in temporarily occupied territory

A mother and her three children have been evacuated from the temporarily occupied territory (TOT) after facing threats of forced separation, Maksym Maksymov, head of the President’s humanitarian initiative Bring Kids Back UA, said on a 24/7 joint news broadcast.

Photo credit: UNN

According to Maksymov, the family was intimidated by occupation authorities who threatened to seize the minors and place them in a state-run orphanage. With this case, the number of children Ukraine has managed to return from Russian control has reached 2,000.

This family lived under occupation, during which the children were forced to attend a Russian school. Occupation structures systematically pressured the mother: they threatened her with fines and promised to take the children to an orphanage. Russian military personnel regularly came to their home for inspections. The father, who is an Anti Terrorist Operations veteran, was repeatedly detained, interrogated, and beaten.

Ultimately, the family decided to leave when they realized that remaining in the occupation would further increase the risks to their lives and health, especially for the children.

Maksymov emphasized that this story is representative. Ukrainian services are returning children not just from difficult conditions, but from an environment where Russian occupying authorities attempt to break them, erase their identity, and exploit them for their own purposes.

He also stressed that in the temporarily occupied territories, Russia is deliberately trying to re-educate Ukrainian children as Russian citizens and views some of them as a resource for current and future wars.

To provide background, a large group of civilians was recently assisted in evacuating from several districts in the Kharkiv region that are being shelled by the Russian military.

Civilians remained in the Kupyansk, Vovchansk, and Izyum Districts.

Emergency services, along with the Red Cross and volunteers from the “Troyanda na Rutsi” organization, evacuated at least seven elderly people and two children. Among those rescued was a man with limited mobility who could not move without assistance; many of the evacuees no longer had homes due to Russian shelling.