Ukrainian Teen Rescued from Occupied Kherson Region: 13th Return in 2023

A 14-year-old boy has been returned from the temporarily occupied Kherson region to the territory controlled by Ukraine. This is the 13th child to be rescued from occupation since the beginning of 2025.

According to Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration, the teenager lived in a village on the left bank with his grandmother. His father was waiting for him on the free territory.

The return became possible thanks to the initiative of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy Bring Kids Back UA and the hard work of the Office of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights.

Now the boy is safe and receiving the necessary assistance. Doctors and psychologists are working with him.

According to the official, since the beginning of 2025, 13 children have been returned from the occupied territories of Kherson region, three of whom are orphans or deprived of parental care.

Recently, a large family - a mother and her eight children aged 5 to 17 - was returned to the government-controlled territory of Ukraine.

Earlier, Intent wrote that there are about 1.5 million children in the temporarily occupied territories, all of whom are under the threat of deportation.

Also <b>, Kateryna Rashevska</b>, a lawyer at the Regional Center for Human Rights, said that the re-education of Ukrainian teenagers and youth is very well integrated into the policy of the Russian Federation, and it is carried out by bodies of different levels - federal, regional, occupation and even Ukrainian collaborators.

Previously, the occupation authorities of the Kherson region forced children to tear up the graves of victims of Nazi mass shootings in 1941-1943 near Henichesk. The invaders called this involvement of schoolchildren in the exhumation of human remains"patriotic education." In addition to children, heavy machinery was also involved in the "search work," which could simply destroy the burial site.

Ірина Глухова