Kathrine Frich
War leaves deep scars, but for the children caught in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, those scars are far more than emotional.
Their stories expose a nightmare of abduction, torture, and forced indoctrination, a reality that many are still too young to fully understand.
Captured in childhood
Sixteen-year-old Vladislav Buriak was trying to flee his hometown of Melitopol when Russian soldiers seized him.
Held in a police station in the occupied city of Vasilivka, he spent 11 weeks witnessing unspeakable cruelty.
Prisoners were tortured several times a week, subjected to beatings and electric shocks using old Soviet field telephones.
“The person almost had no face because it had been disfigured by torture,” Vlad recalled of one victim he was forced to clean up after.
“The smell of death lingered for a long time. I could smell it for at least three months after I was released.”
Vlad now lives in Hertfordshire, serving as an ambassador for Ukrainian children who endured similar horrors.
A child scarred by war
Roman Oleksiv was just eight when two Russian missiles tore through a medical office in Vinnytsia in July 2022.
The blasts killed his mother and left him with burns over nearly half his body.
After three weeks in a coma and more than 30 surgeries in Germany, Roman learned to walk again, and even dance.
“I think I’ll become a musician, why not? The accordion is still good exercise for my fingers,” he said. Now 11, he adds quietly:
“I’m not afraid of anything. Only when I hear air raid sirens. But then I just hug my dad. You can get through anything, just never give up.”
Stolen identities
Seventeen-year-old Valeria Sidorova was taken from her home in Nova Kakhovka after Russian troops promised families their children would be “evacuated” for safety.
Instead, Valeria and hundreds of others were sent to a so-called “re-education camp” in Crimea.
“The camp was like a cage,” she said. “We weren’t allowed to leave the grounds. The children were constantly trying to escape, so they doubled the number of rooms and guards.”
Children were forced to raise Russian flags, sing patriotic songs, and repeat propaganda. Teachers were eventually sent home, leaving them alone under military control.
A new kind of war
A report by War Child found that more than 40% of abducted Ukrainian children are being put through militarization programs.
In these camps, they are dressed in uniforms, trained to use weapons, and taught to throw grenades.
Putin’s so-called “patriotic education” aims to erase Ukrainian identity and shape child captives into soldiers for Russia’s future.
Tens of thousands remain missing, their voices silenced, their names replaced, their futures stolen.
This article is made and published by Kathrine Frich, which may have used AI in the preparation
