Mother hid Olesya from the occupation authorities and her fellow villagers for a whole year so that no one would find out that the girl had been living with her and force her to study at a russian school. Parents took Mykyta, Sashko, and Andrii to their grandparents on the left bank, where it was safer then. However, after the liberation of the Right Bank, the family ended up separated. The parents were waiting for the de-occupation to take their children but realized it wouldn’t happen soon. The divorced parents of Polina, Taras, and Matvyi took different positions after the beginning of the full-scale war: Mom was painfully worried about Ukraine, while Dad became pro-russian. And it was Dad who banned Mom from leaving the territory of russia. During the occupation, children were forced to go to a russian school, and their mother was threatened with the deprivation of her parental rights.

Rescuing these children from the occupation was a complicated task. But our Save Ukraine team did it because the most significant thing is to return the children to Ukraine, to freedom, to allow them to live in a free, cheerful country.

Today, Save Ukraine returned 13 more children from the occupied territories of Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia Oblast as part of the 11 rescue missions. We returned 176 children to Ukraine in total due to 11 rescue missions.