Abducted Valeriia:

“Putin, finally give the children back to Ukraine”

In 2022, Valeriia - then 16 years old, now 19 - was abducted to Crimea. Her grandmother saved her from deportation to Russia. Today, she is successfully studying medicine at university in Kiev.(Bild: Kristian Bissuti)

In 2022, right at the beginning of Putin's war of aggression against Ukraine, the Russians abducted children. Valeriia, now 19, was one of the thousands of girls and boys deported to a re-education camp in Crimea. But her grandmother managed to outwit the Russians and free her.

"Soldiers brutally loaded me onto a bus. Right in front of my school. They drove off with us at hellish speed. My sick mother and grandmother only found out hours later that I had been taken away to a re-education camp," recalls 19-year-old Valeriia S. of the deportation. Pale, insecure and nervous, she recounts the shock of her life.