Another child has been returned from the temporarily occupied Kherson region to the territory controlled by Ukraine.

According to Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration, this is a 14-year-old girl who miraculously managed to avoid being sent to a Russian boarding school. She lived in a foster family with her older sister. When her sister reached the age of majority, she managed to escape from the occupation, but the younger girl remained with her guardian.

The child’s own aunt, with the help of the Ukrainian Child Rights Network and the President’s Bring Kids Back UA initiative, managed to return the girl to her family.

Now the child is safe and receiving the necessary support.

Since the beginning of 2025, 12 children have been returned from the occupied territories of Kherson region, three of whom are orphans or deprived of parental care.

Since the temporary occupation of the Kherson region, the Russian authorities have been actively taking measures aimed at militarizing children and youth in general. One of the key tools of this process is the involvement of minors in the so-called “Yunarmiya”.

Earlier, Kateryna Rashevska, a lawyer at the Regional Center for Human Rights, said that the re-education of Ukrainian teenagers and youth is very well integrated into the policy of the Russian Federation, and it is carried out by bodies of different levels – federal, regional, occupation and even Ukrainian collaborators:

“This is a set of measures aimed at militarizing and politically indoctrinating Ukrainian children through both formal and non-formal education. Both in the occupied territory and in the territory of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus.”

Before that, the occupation authorities of the Kherson region forced children to tear up the graves of victims of Nazi mass shootings in 1941-1943 near Henichesk. The invaders called this involvement of schoolchildren in the exhumation of human remains“patriotic education.” In addition to children, heavy machinery was also involved in the “search work,” which could simply destroy the burial site.

Андрій Колісніченко