A story from a Save Ukraine recovery center · Identifying details changed to protect family still under occupation

My name is Kateryna. That is not my real name — I cannot tell you my real one, because my grandmother is still in occupation. But I am safe now, and I want to tell you about my dad.

I am fourteen. We are from a small village in the occupied south of Ukraine. My dad worked as a security guard. My mom always said he could fix anything in the world.

Months before they took him, my dad and my grandmother were stopped at a russian checkpoint on their way home from the city. The soldiers pulled my dad out of the car and twisted his arms behind his back. My grandmother asked them what they were doing. They told her: “If you want to live, sit silently.” Then they fired their guns into the ground next to the car, just to scare us.

In the summer when I was thirteen, the russians came to my dad’s work and took him. They said he was “a threat to national security.” They never told us why. They put a bag over his head, drove him to the border with Georgia, and pushed him out. There were almost a hundred Ukrainian men with him, stuck in a strip of land between two countries, sleeping in a pit in the ground.

For two months I did not know if my dad was alive.

I stopped eating. I lost ten kilograms in six weeks. The doctors thought something was wrong with me, but nothing was wrong with me. It was just that my dad was gone. Russian men would come looking for him, and they would say things to me about how pretty I was. I learned to keep my eyes on the floor.

At the russian school they made me go to, there was a desk in our classroom painted green and decorated with flowers — a “hero’s desk” for a former student who had died in their war. I sat through every lesson with my mouth shut, thinking about my dad.

He did not die. Two months later, Ukraine brought him home from Georgia. The day I heard his voice on the phone again, I sat down on the floor and cried. I had not been able to cry the whole time he was gone. Then my mom found Save Ukraine, and they got us out, too.

I am at a Save Ukraine center near Kyiv now. I have a Ukrainian passport coming. We are looking for a real school for me. I eat normal meals again. My mom watches me eat and smiles in a way she has not smiled in a long time.

My dad is now serving in the Ukrainian army. He is defending our country. He is defending us. We are not all together yet — but we are all in Ukraine. That means we will be.

I drew this for him. Because he came back. Because we are free. Because soon I will see him again.

Thank you for bringing us home. And please — thousands of children like us are still waiting to be rescued.

— Kateryna, 14

At a Save Ukraine recovery center near Kyiv, children — recently rescued from russian occupation — sat down with paints and brushes. Art therapy is part of how they begin to heal here: to put down on paper what they could not say out loud for years. They made these drawings for our friends in the USA — to thank you for standing with Ukraine, and to remind the world that thousands of Ukrainian children are still waiting to come home.

Save Ukraine has brought thousands of children home from russian occupation, and we walk with them through the years of healing that follow. Thousands more are still waiting.

Learn more about our work and support the rescue at saveukraineua.org

Help us bring the next child home.