A 16-year-old boy Ilya, from Kyiv, was returned to the territory controlled by the Ukrainian government. The teenager spent two years in the occupation.
This was reported by the Ministry of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories.
On the eve of the full-scale invasion, the boy and his grandmother went to the Zaporizhzhia region to visit another grandmother.
He spent more than two years in the occupation. The boyʼs mother has a disability and could not pick up her son herself.
At the beginning of March 2024, Ilyaʼs grandfather appealed to the Ministry of Reintegration with a request to help take his grandson out of the temporarily occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region.
Thanks to the grandfatherʼs appeal, experts of the project "The Way Home" together with the team of the Ministry of Reintegration found a way to return the teenager home.
- On March 14, three children were returned from the occupied territories. The occupiers forced their mother to issue documents and send the children to a Russian school.