A Ukrainian teenager taken to Moscow from the occupied city of Mariupol has been summoned to a local military registration and enlistment office, media have reported. Bohdan Yermokhin, 17, was one of a group of several dozen children moved from the Donetsk region by the Russian military and placed with foster families in Russia. “I no longer have doubts about Russia’s plans,” his lawyer, Yekaterina Bobrovskaya, told the Ukrainian news site Grati. “When Bohdan turns 18 in three weeks, he will already be an adult, and, most likely, he will be sent to serve in the Russian army.” Russian children’s rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova said in July that over 700,000 Ukrainian children have been “received” by Russia since its full-scale invasion in February 2022, an “overwhelming majority” of whom arrived without parents or relatives.
A Ukrainian teenager taken to Moscow from the occupied city of Mariupol has been summoned to a local military registration and enlistment office, media have reported. Bohdan Yermokhin, 17, was one of a group of several dozen children moved from the Donetsk region by the Russian military and placed with foster families in Russia.