Boy managed to return from occupied territories of Kherson region – authorities

A seven-year-old boy was successfully returned from the temporarily occupied part of Kherson region to the territory controlled by Ukraine, Head of the regional military administration Oleksandr Prokudin said.

"A seven-year-old boy from the temporarily occupied part of Kherson region was returned to the territory controlled by Ukraine. On the eve of the full-scale war, his mother went on business to Kyiv, and on February 24, their village was already under occupation. The child remained with his grandmother. When the boy turned seven and it was time to go to school, the Russian occupation authorities demanded that he obtain a Russian birth certificate. It was impossible to do this without his parents, as well as to obtain custody. The occupation services began to threaten to take the child away from his grandmother and send him to a boarding school," he said in Telegram channel on Friday.

According to him, the boy's rescue was possible thanks to the assistance of the Ukrainian Network for Children's Rights and within the framework of the initiative of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy "Bring Kids Back UA" on the eve of the holidays, after almost four years of separation, the boy hugged his mother again. "Now they are together on free Ukrainian soil, receiving all the necessary support and making up for lost time," Prokudin said.

He thanked everyone involved for saving the child.