Ukrainian teenager who was taken to Russia from occupied Mariupol returns to Ukraine

A Ukrainian teenager who was taken to Russia from the occupied city of Mariupol during the war and prevented from leaving the country earlier this year returned to Ukraine on Sunday.

Yermokhin, an orphan from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol that was captured by Moscow’s troops during the first year of the war, was taken to Russia and placed in a foster family in the Moscow region.

On Sunday, Reuters correspondents at Kortelisy, a Ukrainian village near the border with Belarus, saw Yermokhin driven into Ukraine from the border in a van. Asked if he was glad to be back in Ukraine, Yermokhin said “yes”.

“We were in constant contact with Bohdan and he’s already in Ukraine with his cousin,” Andriy Yermak, head of the president’s office, wrote on Telegram messenger, announcing his return.

Mariam Lambert of Dutch NGO Orphans Feeding Foundation told Reuters they have been working with Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman and Zelensky’s office on the return of children deported to Russia, including Yermokhin, since August.

His lawyer, Kateryna Bobrovska, has said that Yermokhin had been told to report to a draft office near Moscow next month and warned he could be conscripted into the Russian army.

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In a statement, Russia’s children’s commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, said he had been summoned to update his military registration and that “all Russian citizens of his age receive a summons of that kind”.

Lvova-Belova said Yermokhin left Russia on Saturday on a plane to Minsk on his way to Ukraine and that he had met a cousin in the Belarusian capital. She acknowledged Yermokhin had wanted to be reunited with his relative.

The Kremlin says Moscow does not recognise the jurisdiction of the ICC and has rejected the allegations