Kherson community launches project to support children returned from occupation

A pilot project aimed at providing comprehensive support to children who have been returned from the temporarily occupied territories, the Russian Federation, and Belarus, and their families, has been launched in the Kherson city territorial community.

This was announced on Telegram by Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson Regional Administrative Department .

The main goal of the project is to create a safe space where children can feel protected and gradually regain trust. To do this, a specialist is in constant contact with each family to help solve urgent problems: from restoring documents and arranging education to providing medical and psychological support.

The first such specialist was Olena, a resident of Kherson Oblast, who went through a similar experience herself and now helps other families, demonstrating the power of resilience.

The project is responding to a large-scale problem: according to the JAC, 639 young residents of Kherson region have been returned to the government-controlled territory. The Kherson community itself is home to 12 children who have recently returned from the occupation. These boys and girls have experienced searches, interrogations, abductions, humiliation, pressure and threats, which underscores the critical need for comprehensive support for their rehabilitation.

On September 26, a group of children - girls and boys aged 7 to 17 - were returned to government-controlled territory from the occupied Kherson region.

According to Prokudin, a seventeen-year-old boy was taken for hours of interrogation for his pro-Ukrainian position - without his parents or any legal representatives. The teenager was threatened, intimidated and psychologically pressured.

The fifteen-year-old boy and his thirteen-year-old sister managed to avoid attending a Russian school for almost three years, but the occupation authorities gave their parents an ultimatum: either the children would study under the Russian program or the whole family would have to leave.

Катерина Глушко