"They ask to take them out and still come back" - stories of evacuation of families with children from frontline territories

These are families who have already been taken out of the zone of active hostilities, but they are coming back.

This was reported in an article by Suspilne.

A family with six children remains in the forced evacuation zone, which volunteers and police have evacuated six times over the past two years.
This was told by the commander of the rapid response unit of the Red Cross of Kharkiv region Igor Klimenko and police colonel Vyacheslav Markov.

For the last month and a half 14 minors have been evacuated from Kupyanskiy district - all of them together with their parents or legal representatives have been evacuated before.

We are making every effort to evacuate them. Some of them have been evacuated more than once from the zone of active hostilities, but their parents return back, bypassing our checkpoints, endangering both themselves and their children. And we only have to evacuate them once again," said Vyacheslav Markov.

According to the commander of the Red Cross Rapid Response Unit, a family with six children lives in Kupyansky district and has already been evacuated from the zone of active hostilities six times.

Since 2023, when the forced evacuation of families with children was first announced, we have already travelled six times to pick them up. And they still go back there. The settlement is constantly bombarded by everything: artillery, FPV drones, CABs. And after a while they call all the hotlines again and say: "Take us out", - said Igor Klimenko.

And at the moment there is no response mechanism. This is a big question, because there are six children in the family - four native and two adopted. The mother is alone, there is no father. This is a collapse.

According to Vyacheslav Markov, the grey zone in Kharkiv region has expanded because of Russian FPV drones, which fly at a distance of 25-30 kilometres.

We use armoured vehicles, means of electronic defence, which, unfortunately, by law cannot be used by the volunteer sector. We use anti-defence rifles, but our colleagues do not. Therefore, every second evacuation we carry out together, - said the assistant chief of police of Kharkiv region.

According to Igor Klymenko, evacuations of 2023-2024 were more massive and safer.

Now every evacuation is a special operation. We think through logistical routes, escape routes, in case something happens, insurance cars. And, for example, it took 24 hours to evacuate two people from one of the settlements of Kupyanska community. Three cars and eight people were involved. This is to get two people out. Because this is a zone of permanent defeat, - said Klimenko.

In 40 settlements of Kupyansk district mandatory evacuation of families with children was announced on 14 October 2025. It was decided to forcibly evacuate people from Velikiy Burluk, Vilkhuvat and Shevchenko communities, in particular from the settlements of Velikiy Burluk, Podseredneye and Prykolotnoye. According to the OBA, 601 children - that is 409 families - are to be evacuated from these settlements.

As of 11 December 2025, 114 children from 80 families remained in the forced evacuation zone in Kupyansk district of Kharkiv region. Also the leadership of the district checked the information about 12 children, who had previously been evacuated, but there is data that they together with their parents could return, said on air of the telethon "United news" the head of Kupyansk RVA Andriy Kanashevich.

on 15 December 2025, the mandatory forced evacuation of children from certain settlements of Kupyansk district was completed - 42 children remained in dangerous settlements.