His tale reads like a movie script: a young boy left in an orphanage after losing his mother to illness and his father, who was involved with criminals, when he was just a toddler.
He survives through the most brutal battle in a horrific war, witnessing unspeakable acts – only to be abducted by the opposing side, brought to the core of their regime, and placed in a foster family led by one of their top officials. Nevertheless, this rebellious adolescent boy remained fiercely faithful to his homeland – even when faced with threats of being institutionalized by a notorious war criminal or compelled to fight against his own people in the military.
Ultimately, he secures his freedom after two unsuccessful escape attempts, just a day before he would have been conscripted into the army – his courageous decision to stand by his country supported by a determined female attorney who took a risk by publicizing his situation.
This is, however, the true tale of one Ukrainian boy who was delivered into the hands of the Kremlin and is now determined to help free all the children stolen like him during Russia’s bloodstained rampage in his country.
‘It was worse than hell,’ said Bogdan Yermokhin, who was paraded on television in Moscow during his saga and forced into saying he supported Russia’s attack.
I met this 19-year-old, whom the Kremlin could not break, in a Kyiv park. The war felt far away as families walked with dogs and mothers strolled with their children.
‘I was born in Mariupol, lived there – and hopefully I will live there again,’ he told me. ‘For me, it is the most beautiful city in the world where everyone lived peacefully.’
Yet even Bogdan’s birth was complicated by tuberculosis, which he was fortunate to survive. When he was four, his Ukrainian mother succumbed to long-running health struggles, then his Russian hoodlum father was killed.
Bohdan Yermokhin, a Ukrainian teenager who was taken to Russia from the occupied city of Mariupol, poses for a picture after arriving in his home country from Belarus at a rest stop in Rivne, amid Russia’s ongoing attack on Ukraine, November 19, 2023
Bohdan Yermokhin shakes hands after arriving in Ukraine from Belarus at the border crossing in Kortelisy
Maria Lvova Belova with children brought from Donbas for adoption into Moscow region
When Moscow launched its latest attack on the city in February 2022, he was living in a college dormitory with ten other teenagers and studying to be a welder.
Mariupol became a byword for horror during Russia’s three-month battle to seize control of the strategic port with besieged civilians trapped amid savage fighting that led to the flattening of the city and at least 8,000 deaths.
Bogdan hid in basements, risking his life when venturing out to deliver water from a well to stranded people. A friend protecting him from an explosion was shredded by shrapnel. Later, he cradled a small girl with a chest wound as she died in his arms.
‘It was like the movies about World War II, with lots of dead bodies in the streets,’ he said.
In May, Russian troops arrived to clear the basement where he was hiding. He was taken with three friends, then held with 27 others rounded up on the streets, seized from families or grabbed trying to escape to Ukrainian-held land.
‘Not many children were left alive at that point,’ recalled Bogdan.
The 31 captives were taken to Donetsk – the Ukrainian city controlled by Kremlin-backed separatists since 2014 – where they were given new birth certificates by the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and Russian phones.
Yermokhin hugs his lawyer Kateryna Bobrovska after arriving in Ukraine from Belarus at the border
President Vladimir Putin holds a meeting with Maria Lvova-Belova appointed Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights, via video link from his Novo-Ogaryovo residence. Yevgeny Paulin/Russian Presidential Press and Information Office/TASS
Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova in Moscow, Russia May 31, 2024
Bogdan was the oldest and he tried to soothe the fears of others, some as young as seven. ‘Some of the children were really frightened. There was a war and they’d seen so much for their age. Some kids had lost their parents so were recently orphaned.’
He claims to have encouraged their defiance, wearing a Western military hat and playing the Ukrainian national anthem on his phone, which led to beatings.
One month later, the group was taken almost 1,000 miles by bus and plane to a building in grounds near Moscow, which turned out to be a ‘children’s sanatorium’ run by the Office of the President of the Russian Federation. ‘My first thought was that we were in deep s**t,’ said Bogdan. ‘There were signs at the entrance saying the sanatorium was under the Russian president. Even on Google Maps, it was marked as being under Putin.’
Polyany Sanatorium claims on its website to be a place for children on ‘rehabilitation courses’ while they ‘relax, have fun and make new friends’. Official documents from Donetsk that I have seen, listing the names and dates of birth for this group, show the children consent to their ‘temporary departure… for the purpose of rehabilitation’.
But the truth for these 31 traumatised Ukrainian youngsters could not have been more sinister: they were going to be doled out for adoption by senior Russian officials. These innocent victims were used to promote one of the cruellest of Russia’s war crimes unleashed in Ukraine: the seizure of up to 300,000 children as part of Putin’s systematic bid to wipe out the future of the nation he invaded.
They became props for his propaganda machine – supposedly saved from the horrors of conflict – with some even made to attend a pro-war rally to thank their ‘rescuers’.
Soon after their arrival, the children were visited by a smiling blonde woman in her late 30s, who took them out for ice-cream.
Her name was Maria Lvova-Belova, a Putin aide, who was married to a Russian Orthodox priest and is wanted by the International Criminal Court as the architect of Russia’s child-snatching.
Putin Aide Maria Lvova is pictured in April 2024
‘She told us exactly who she was and I knew that she was the President’s person, so I had to be careful around her,’ said Bogdan. ‘But I told her several times to her face: you have brought your worst enemy into the heart of your country.’
Soon the children started being taken in by well-connected families. Staff gave them a choice: agree to adoption or get sent into a grim Russian orphanage.
Lvova-Belova, who meets regularly with Putin as his ‘children’s rights commissioner’, took Bogdan’s friend Filipp into her family as a poster child for their propaganda – despite having five biological children, five adopted children and guardianship over 13 more children with disabilities in care homes. ‘The moment I spoke to him I realised he’s mine: this is my child,’ she told a documentary.
An aide took Roman, another friend badly injured in Mariupol.
Finally Bogdan was selected for fostering by Irina Rudnitska, an assistant to Tatiana Moskalkova, Putin’s notorious ‘adviser on human rights’. She is described in the Russian media as a close friend of Lvova-Belova with 13 adopted children.
‘The family were nice but they are my enemies,’ said Bogdan. ‘They were wealthy. They watched me all the time. They tried to convert me to being a good Russian – they’d tell me that Ukraine is the enemy – but I’m not a fool and would start arguing.’
Lvova-Belova has gushed on propaganda channels about how these youngsters talked negatively about Putin but after being handed to new families, their hostility transformed into patriotic love for Russia.
The reality was rather different. They were given Russian passports but these were held by their adoptive families, trapping them in a dictatorship where such documents are required even for a bus trip between big cities.
Some spent time in the Kremlin network of so-called ‘summer camps’ for children, subjected to brainwashing. Yet seven have managed to escape – including three younger captives, whose father went on a mission into Russia to reclaim his children.
Despite his injuries, Roman escaped to Ukraine in December 2022 and three months later, having tracked down Bogdan online, he introduced him
to human rights lawyer Kateryna Bobrovska.
Almost immediately, in March last year, Bogdan found he was being despatched to a summer camp. He tried to get hold of his passport but, after failing, ran away and reached the border with Belarus before being recaptured.
Bobrovska, who was briefly detained after going to Belarus in a bid to fetch him, lost contact with Bogdan for a month. Then the teenager was paraded on Russian television by Lvova-Belova with claims the Ukrainians were trying to force him to return against his will.
Clearly this boy had become a crucial pawn in the struggle between dictatorship and the rules-based global order. A few weeks later someone posing as Bogdan wrote to Bobrovska – and their discussions rapidly appeared in Russia’s media claiming mendacious Ukrainians were trying to steal children that wanted to stay in Russia. After another attempted escape, Lvova-Belova forced the teenager to write a statement denouncing Ukraine. ‘They told him either to write the statement or he would be admitted to a psychiatric ward,’ said his lawyer.
By this point, Bobrovska had managed to obtain a Ukrainian birth certificate for Bogdan and track down a cousin in Turkey to start the challenging legal process of claiming family guardianship that could potentially secure his release back to Ukraine.
But it seems the Kremlin was tipped off that it might lose its prize hostage. So in October Bogdan was summoned to a meeting with the human rights commissioner Moskalkova and – in front of Russian journalists – asked if he really wanted to return to Ukraine.
‘I told her: yes, I want to return to Ukraine so why aren’t you letting me go? And she said, sure, we’ll help you. And the next day I received a call-up paper. This was my big fear: that I’d be sent to fight against Ukraine and end up in Russian trenches.’
He knew the risks since he was set to turn 18 the following month – the legal age for conscription. Suddenly his foster family began trying to send him to hospital for ‘knee treatment’, presumably to ensure he remained in Russia until his birthday.
It was a race against time – and probably for his life. So the terrified teenager sent a whispered video message recorded that night in a toilet to his lawyer, Bobrovska, pleading for help. She was shocked to see he had already been given a military haircut.
As the clock ticked, with Russian officials frustrating negotiations for his freedom, Bobrovska opted to go public. She recorded her own plea on video direct to President Volodymyr Zelensky asking him to take personal charge of the case and the explosion of publicity paid off with Russia eventually letting him leave.
He arrived in Ukraine with the aid of the Red Cross just one hour before his 18th birthday, immediately wrapping himself in the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag.
Now Bogdan and his lawyer have set up Rescued Future of Ukraine, a foundation to extricate all the children taken by Russia.
‘I am given strength by the traumatic experiences I went through,’ he said.
‘When I came back I was overjoyed. There was a great feeling of accomplishment – my dream came true. Yes, I cried. Now my second dream is to return the rest of the kids held hostage so they can feel the same joy.’
Additional reporting: Kate Baklitskaya
