Rostyslav Lavrov, who was abducted by Russian authorities and held at a military camp in Crimea before being rescued, speaks in an interview in Kyiv with the Hankook Ilbo on Feb. 10. Korea Times photo by Jeong Seung-im
“I am Ukrainian. Why should I sing the Russian anthem?”
Lavrov was 16 when Russian soldiers broke into his home in the southern Kherson region in March 2022, a month after the invasion began. Soldiers first took his disabled mother to a psychiatric hospital before taking him away under the pretense of “protection.”
The reality was anything but protection, he says. With guns pointed at him, soldiers told him he must comply with Russian law and follow them.
He was sent to a Russian-style boarding school for a month before being transferred to a military camp holding more than 1,000 Ukrainian children and teenagers aged eight to 18. Speaking Ukrainian was forbidden. Instructors told them that “Russia is the greatest country and you are Russians.”
There, he was taught to operate rifles and drones. Lavrov remembers one instructor setting fire to a Ukrainian flag and warning that their country would meet the same fate.
When Rostyslav Lavrov refused to sing the Russian national anthem, he says guards placed him in solitary confinement for a week. The room was narrow, its shelves lined only with books in Russian.
His story reflects what Ukrainian officials and researchers describe as one of the most troubling dimensions of the war: the large-scale transfer of children from occupied territories into Russia.
Early Ukrainian government estimates suggest at least 20,000 children and teenagers taken just three months into the war in 2022, but the true numbers remain uncertain nearly four years on.
Researchers at Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab estimate the figure could reach 35,000, calling it “the biggest child abduction since World War II.” Other assessments go as high as 700,000.
Source: Korea Times News
