Beaten and threatened with boarding school: kidnapped boy tells how occupiers abuse children

A video to this effect was published in Telegram by Petro Andryushchenko, adviser to the mayor of Mariupol.

The Russians who were holding the children denied releasing Kherson and pressured them psychologically, promising to allocate them to other families.

They said they would take us to Pskov. "There's a boarding school there. And there you will be adopted." We were told that our parents didn't refuse us, you wouldn't take us away. And we were told that we were abandoned. I call my mother. My mother said to the director of the camp, "Are you guys sick? I didn't say that. Why are you lying to the kids?". And she says: "You're not taking them away anyway. They are Russian children," says the boy.

In addition, the occupants fed the children poorly and beat them for their pro-Ukrainian stance.

Those who were pro-Ukraine were beaten up. From the Kherson region almost all of them were for Ukraine. They were beating with a metal stick. They said "we will take you to the boarding school, you will sit there and you will understand everything. They hit a girl on the back and she got a bruise. Once we were sitting in the hall, someone shouted 'Glory to Ukraine' and someone answered: "Glory to the heroes. These children were taken away and I don't know what happened to them," the teenager recalls.