"When Polina learned what happened, she contacted the school and found that a new director, who was pro-Russian, was now in charge. He told her that Nikita had been sent to Crimea for rehabilitation for a few days. But she later learned that, from Crimea, Nikita had been sent to an orphanage in the Krasnodar region in Russia, and then transferred again to an unknown location."
""I was completely lost," says Polina through a translator. (Her story has also been featured on CBS's 60 Minutes.) "I didn't know what to do, but I wanted to find my grandson, and I started to write everywhere, to look for someone who can help." She came across an organization named Save Ukraine, founded in 2014, which locates and rescues Ukrainian children taken by Russian forces and rehabilitates them once they get home."
A few months before the 2022 invasion, Nikita was sent to a boarding school in Oleshky for orphans and children requiring complex care. He was around nine, suffered chronic stomach issues, and had other special needs. His grandmother Polina lived in Poland and provided support while his mother lived in a different Ukrainian city and his father was absent from official records. In fall 2022 Russian soldiers seized the boarding school and took the children. A new pro-Russian director said Nikita was sent to Crimea, then to an orphanage in Krasnodar, and later to an unknown location while claiming he had no family. An NGO named Save Ukraine investigated and located Nikita at an institution in occupied Skadovsk.
Read at The Walrus
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