Yermak: Another young man returned from occupation

The 20-year-old youth was returned to government-controlled territory of Ukraine, said head of the President’s Office, Andriy Yermak.

"As part of the Ukrainian President's initiative, Bring Kids Back UA managed to rescue a 20-year-old boy from the temporarily occupied territory," Yermak wrote on his Telegram channel on Wednesday.

According to him, the boy spent more than three years under constant pressure in the occupation, the occupiers forced him to apply for Russian documents and threatened his family. "The example of his sister, who managed to escape to free territory earlier, helped him decide to go home. Today, thanks to the help of the Ukrainian Network for Children's Rights and the Humanity initiative, the boy is already safe with his family and receives the necessary help and support in Ukraine," Yermak added.

Head of Kherson Regional Military Administration, Oleksandr Prokudin, in turn, reported that a fourteen-year-old girl was returned to the territory controlled by Ukraine from the temporarily occupied part of Kherson region.

"The child was separated from her mother for more than three and a half years, because on the eve of the Great War the woman went to Kyiv to earn money. The girl stayed with her grandfather in her native temporarily occupied town. The child was forced to glorify Russia at school, and the grandfather was repeatedly threatened to take his granddaughter to a boarding school if he tried to send her to her mother. Fortunately, the girl is already with her mother and is receiving the necessary help," he wrote on Telegram.

According to Prokudin, the rescue took place within the framework of the Ukrainian President's Bring Kids Back initiative and thanks to the efforts of the Ukrainian Network for Children's Rights.

On July 25, Advisor to the Head of the President’s Office of Ukraine Daria Zarivna reported that within the framework of the initiative of the President of Ukraine Bring Kids Back UA, 1,458 children have already been returned, but more than 1.6 million Ukrainian children remain under the control of the enemy, the President’s Office reports.

After this, more than 40 more children, teenagers and young adults, as well as some of their parents, returned from the occupied territory to Ukraine within the framework of the Bring Kids Back UA initiative.