Ukrainian farmer's son was kidnapped by Russian army after being brainwashed

Farmer Volodymr Sanin began to worry about the isolation of his village when Russian soldiers took an interest in his 16-year-old adopted son. "From the first days of the war, we were cut off from the whole of Ukraine," he explains. "The Russians occupied the territory and cut off lines of communication. There were no connections,no delivery to grocery stores and it was impossible to withdraw funds at ATMs."

What might spark a violent reaction from the occupying forces that had rolled into his community in Ukraine's Kharkiv Oblast region was unclear. But, so far, the policy of avoidance adopted by the family had been effective.

"We did not let our children go anywhere so as not to attract attention," he adds. "We were afraid our adopted kids would be taken away because they would say we have no rights to them under Russian law."

But keeping teenagers inside at all times is not easy and, eventually, it became impossible to stop his son from heading into the village to meet friends.

Speaking to the Express for the launch of our major new campaign, Return The Stolen Children, Volodymr continues: "He'd go to the centre, where there is a little field and play football. He gradually startedacting differently and told me he had 'new friends'. One day, he went out and didn't come back all night."

By the time his son came home one evening drunk and smelling of cigarettes, Volodymr, 56, a father of 16 adopted and two biological children, and his wife Halyna, 57, realised he was being groomed by the Russian soldiers.

"I began to think he was being brainwashed and we couldn't do anything," he explains. "The Russian soldiers were giving him alcohol and we were worried if we upset my son he might say something about the location of his brother who's in the Ukrainian army."

Having previously spoken harshly about Russia, the teenager's insults about Vladimir Putin's despotic regime abruptly stopped.

One evening there was a knock at the door that changed Volodymr's life forever. "Three soldiers with automatic rifles came to us and told us to hand over my son's passport. They said our son was going to Russia to study and play football. We were afraid for the other children and felt we had no choice but to let him go."

It would be the last time they would see the 16-year-old for almost a year.

Volodymr's experiences are not unique. Since Putin invaded Ukraine three years ago, children have been kidnapped by Russia on an industrial scale. There are currently 35,000 independently verified cases of state-sponsored child abduction, although numbers are likely far higher, given how little is known about the 1.6million young people effectively held captive in occupied territories.

Some children have been lured to Russian-controlled areas on the promise of a fun adventure. Many parents let their children travel to holiday camps, which they believed would offer relief from the stress of life under occupation. In fact they were being used to steal their young ones.

Contact with those abducted varies. Some families are completely cut off.

Fortunately for Volodymr, who felt completely betrayed, his son continued to speak to one of his siblings. But it soon became clear his son was not studying or playing football - he was scrabbling around for work to pay for food. As his situation deteriorated, he begged to speak to his father. The teenager toldhim he was scared and wanted to come back to Ukraine. At school he had refused to sing the Russian national anthem and was being reprimanded for it.

Volodymr started searching for a way to help his son escape, a quest that became more urgent when it emerged there were plans to enrol him in a Russian military school. Once through those doors, it would be near impossible for him to escape. He would return to Ukraine - but as a Russian soldier with orders to kill his countrymen.

Desperately seeking to save his son from this fate, Volodymr turned to the only option available - he made contact with Save Ukraine. Founded 11 years ago, during the early days of the conflict in the east of the country, the charity specialises in rescuing children abducted by Russia and supporting families affected by the disappearances. Its daring missions into enemy territory have returned 793 kidnapped youngsters to date, but there remains barely enough time in the day to deal with the hundreds of cases that are reported to them over the course of any 24-hour period.

The scale of the issue is obvious at the organisation's Kyiv offices, where a giant map of the country with pins and string highlights the areas where stolen children are believed to be concentrated - normally the front lines in Russian-controlled areas. Gazing up at the tangled mass of red and yellow, Save Ukraine's chief legal officer Myroslava Kharchenko's hand trembles with emotion.

"Right now, I'm sitting here drinking coffee, talking to you, but I know thatsomewhere a child hasn't seen their mother for three years," she says. "Maybe they're living with a Russian family and being mistreated. They could be bullied at school just for being a Ukrainian child.

"I'm constantly searching for tools, for ways to convey information or facilitate others to help.

"But I have a feeling of collapse because everything we are doing, everything Ukraine is doing, it's not enough. Right this second, children are suffering. I know countless stories of what happens to them under occupation, when they are deported, and I can't change it."

Myroslava says in over a decade of dealing with this issue, Save Ukraine has uncovered evidence that child abductions are a calculated strategy coming from the top. "This is what Putin wants," she explains. "We work closely with the Security Service of Ukraine and foreign intelligence. We have conducted investigations that have given us enough information to say this is a planned operation.

"They know exactly what they are doing to these children - they leave them without mothers, fathers, without support. They know how to break their psyche, to use propaganda to erase the Ukrainian in them and replace it with a Russian identity. Putin wants our boys to fill the ranks of his Russian army, and for our girls to give birth to new Russian children. He plans to keep fighting until the last Ukrainian is gone. That is his real goal."

Volodymr's son was one of those destined to wear a Russian uniform until Save Ukraine devised a plan to help him escape. Days before he was due to begin military school, the boy travelled to the border, where he met an unassuming elderly lady and her grandson who would take him back into Ukraine. When they were stopped by Russian forces at the border, however, the other boy lost his nerve and blurted out that they weren't in fact related. Volodymr's son was taken into a processing facility where he was beaten and interrogated.

But by a stroke of luck, he was imprisoned on the day mercenary leader and former Putin loyalist turned outcast Yevgeny Prigozhin started to march on Moscow. The news sparked confusion in the military outpost and the teenager was mistakenly released. Bruised from the beating but determined to make it home, he was able to make it back into Ukrainian territory.

Volodymr and Halyna rushed to meet him in Kyiv. It had been 11 months since he was taken and they were desperate to see their son. Between the hugs and tears he told them he regretted leaving, but they understood. He was a victim after all...

"It's a situation we want to put behind us," Volodymr adds wearily, "I think my son will be fine. I trust him."

Since returning to his family the boy, now 19, has chosen to take on the people who stole him away. He's enlisted in the Ukrainian army and fights on the front lines against Russia. Volodymr understands he is one of the lucky few to have had their children returned. He often thinks of the local orphanage, where he and his wife fostered kids, that was emptied by the Russian army.

"The decision to take these children is a war crime," he says. "They are disconnected from home, from the life they used to live and their school. Children need communication. To cut them off from their support networks is an awful offence."

Learn about the work of Save Ukraine at saveukraineua.org. To help Ukrainian kids rebuild their lives, visit: https://giving. classy.org/campaign/585068/donateor email: help@saveukraineus.org