A 17-year-old teenager from Ukraine abducted by Russia was proven to be the subject of a conspiracy to join the Russian military, perhaps to fight against his own country.
Bogdan Yermokhin is an orphan teenager who originated in the city of Mariupol, Ukraine. The kid was moved to Russia last year after it captured the port city.
Bogdan is going to turn 18 this year and was ordered to report to a Moscow region draft centre next month.
He attempted to flee Moscow in the interim, but Russian border guards stopped him close to Belarus.
After the news broke out, Yermokhin’s lawyer appealed to President Volodymyr Zelensky for assistance to deport him back to his own country.
Since the war, Russia has been accused of illegally transferring thousands of kids from Ukraine, due to which the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against President Vladimir Putin and Lvova-Belova in March 2023.
Ukraine says forced deportation is a war crime. It has produced a list of roughly 20,000 missing children in the country, despite Moscow’s denial of all the accusations and unwavering assertion that the purpose of the children’s expulsion is for their safety.
However, on Yermokhin’s deportation, Russian Children’s Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova announced on Friday that he would be assisted on his journey abroad to meet his cousin. Ukraine confirmed the statement.
Bogdan Yermokhin: Life in Russia
Before moving to Russia, Bogdan was living in Mariupol as an orphaned teenager, and he found his legal guardian in 2021, the director of the technical college he was studying at.
Russia took control of Mariupol in 2022 as a consequence of the bloodiest fighting of the conflict. The reason and method behind his following relocation to Russia remain unclear.
According to a statement provided by Russia’s children’s rights commissioner, the kid was among those Ukrainian children who were “found in cellars” by Russian soldiers.
After that, Bogdan Yermokhin was sent to the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Donetsk. later, the children’s rights commissioner put him with the thirty Ukrainian children in a youth summer camp in the Moscow area.
The teenager, who was 16 years old at the time, was put under the supervision of a local foster family and provided Russian documents.
He was enrolled in a Russian college to continue his studies, and a comment from Ms. Lvova-Belova states that he worked in the summer camp to “integrate teenagers from Russian-occupied Ukraine”.
Irina Rudnitskaya, who was appointed as his legal guardian in Russia in 2022, confirmed to the BBC that he had received a call to enlist in the military.
According to BBC reportage, while the statement claimed that Bogdan was not in danger of being sent to fight in Ukraine because “he is a student” and that “new recruits do not take part in the Special Military Operation,” it is not entirely accurate. There have been cases where new recruits have been sent to the front lines.
While the argument has spread a culmination of views from around the world, Bogdan’s Russian and former Ukrainian guardians confirmed that the Russian authorities consider him their citizen and that he is obliged to serve in the army under Russian law.
The declaration has become one of the grounds for the ICC’s warrant issued against Belova, and as per international community standards, Yermokhin remains a Ukrainian citizen, and the Russian military summon stands illegal.
Though Putin’s government constantly denies any allegation of having engaged in the illegal activity of deporting children, it says that the authority does not stop minors from visiting their relatives abroad.
In the case of Bogdan Yermokh, Ukraine’s ombudsman has confirmed an agreement between the countries that will allow him to reunite with his relatives back home.
