Sofia is a 17-year-old foster child from the occupied Kherson region. When the Russians arrived in her home village, they immediately began going from house to house — checking phones, taking valuables. Sofia was then forced to attend a Russian school, because refusal carried a threat: she would be taken from her foster parents and placed in a state institution. Yet even under those conditions, Sofia maintained an unwavering pro-Ukrainian stance. She skipped the lessons designed to brainwash them with tall tales about the “heroes of the special military operation” and instead walked the streets playing Ukrainian songs from her phone — which drove the occupiers into a fury. On one occasion, Sofia was stopped in the middle of the street, handcuffed, and bundled into a car — because her principled behavior had led them to suspect she was passing their positions on to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Then, when the school year ended, Sofia and her classmates were sent to a summer camp. “They told us there would be a sea, bring a swimsuit,” the girl recounts. “They drive us into some kind of forest. I stand there, looking around. Where is the sea? A Russian man laughed: And who told you that you were going on vacation?”

That is how Sofia found herself, instead of at the seaside, at a military children’s camp in the Volgograd region. Children under sixteen — like her — were met with daily line-ups, running in the rain, and digging trenches against the clock. If you dug too slowly, firecrackers were thrown into the trench to hurry the teenagers along. Sofia was taught tactics, demolition, and drone operation. On the final day, to the sound of the Russian anthem, the girl was handed a certificate confirming her successful completion of “military training.” “What do I need this for?” she asked. “What do you mean, what for? You will join the army.”

But Sofia would never, under any circumstances, have agreed to that. With the help of our foundation, the girl was evacuated from the occupied territory.