18-year-old Anna lived in the occupation for 10 years and learned not to tell anything and not to ask too many questions.

Accord­ing to the NGO Cen­tre of Civ­il Edu­ca­tion “Almen­da”, there are cur­rent­ly more than 615,000 school-age chil­dren in the tem­porar­i­ly occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries. They live in dif­fi­cult and dan­ger­ous con­di­tions. The occu­py­ing author­i­ties draft Ukrain­ian boys to the Russ­ian army, send teenagers to “mil­i­tary-patri­ot­ic camps” for “re-edu­ca­tion”, and send chil­dren for adop­tion to Russ­ian fam­i­lies.

Human rights activists report that teenagers and chil­dren are cap­tured, intim­i­dat­ed, tor­tured, and killed in the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries.

“My friend was buried in a mass grave”

Anna, 18 years old, Donet­sk – Lviv

Anna (the name has been changed) is 18 years old; she was born and spent her whole life in Donet­sk. Not so long ago, she left for the Ukraine-con­trolled ter­ri­to­ry. The girl asked for anonymi­ty because her rel­a­tives, includ­ing her broth­er, remain in the occu­pied Donet­sk. “I real­ly want him to leave too, I am afraid he will be con­script­ed to the Russ­ian army,” she says. She adds, “None of my rel­a­tives know about some of the things I am telling here, and I hope they nev­er will.”

Anna says that as a child, and then as a teenag­er, she did not ful­ly under­stand what was hap­pen­ing in the city. How­ev­er, she quick­ly real­ized she had to be care­ful, in par­tic­u­lar with words and posts on social net­works. In gen­er­al, she says, she was just liv­ing her life, like her peers in oth­er cities and coun­tries. The only dif­fer­ence was that she was liv­ing her life in the occu­pa­tion.

Anna’s sto­ry:

— 2014 and 2015 were the most ter­ri­ble years for me. We were con­stant­ly stay­ing in base­ments because of shelling. One of the mem­o­ries of that time: once after the shelling, my friend ran to us, he was six years old at the time. He kept repeat­ing, “Mom, mom, mom…” We could not under­stand what he want­ed, we thought his mom could be sick or had left and did not come back for a long time. We went to his house. There, instead of the house, there were ruins. Among the bricks and boards, there were parts of the body… I real­ized then that some­thing ter­ri­ble was hap­pen­ing. And it was hap­pen­ing not some­where else, but here, with us. I was eight years old.

I remem­ber we had a neigh­bor who was 35–40 years old. He was draft­ed to the Russ­ian army; he took part in the war and returned. This was a mir­a­cle, because few Ukraini­ans returned — they were often list­ed as miss­ing. This man returned — with­out a leg, with wound­ed eyes. He con­stant­ly said, “We are being lied to, every­thing is not real­ly like that”. I asked him how he lost his leg, and he only repeat­ed this phrase. Then he dis­ap­peared. His wife said that one day they [Rus­sians] came for him and took him away. That was how I real­ized that peo­ple were tak­en for their words.

I grew up play­ing in the yard. We were a group of friends — some a lit­tle old­er, some younger. We spent time togeth­er. Then the boys began to be draft­ed to the Russ­ian army, they died there. It was painful. Did they sup­port Rus­sia? I do not know, I do not think so. No one want­ed to die for it [Rus­sia], that is for sure. We were still chil­dren. I remem­ber how one of my friends was tak­en away. Armed men took him and his father out of the house; they were beat­en and cov­ered in blood. We all ran out into the yard. Then this friend of mine looked at me like he knew he would not come back. I could see in his eyes that he did not want it, did not sup­port it. He did not sup­port it; if he did, he would not have been beat­en so hard.

“The boys began to be draft­ed to the Russ­ian army, they died there. It was painful”. Illus­tra­tion by Inga Levi

Nei­ther he nor his father sur­vived. There were even no bod­ies [to bury]. Only one of my friends was brought home to be buried. He was one of the first to be con­script­ed — on Feb­ru­ary 16, 2022. He got miss­ing almost imme­di­ate­ly. His rel­a­tives were told that accord­ing to the doc­u­ments, he did not even take part in the war. Then he was brought back. The rem­nants of him. The fam­i­ly had no mon­ey, so they buried him in a mass grave. I was cry­ing. Of course, he was not a hero for me, but he was my friend. The death of my friends was a painful expe­ri­ence for me. They were forcibly tak­en to the Russ­ian army, forced to fight against their own coun­try, they died. What for? It would be eas­i­er for me [to under­stand this] if they sup­port­ed Rus­sia. Then I could hate them. But…

In gen­er­al, I had an ordi­nary life of a teenag­er, as much as it was pos­si­ble in those con­di­tions. There are sev­er­al cin­e­mas in Donet­sk; how­ev­er, they show pirate copies of movies and Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da films there. There is a chic cin­e­ma named after Taras Shevchenko. There is a large stat­ue of the poet there, which can­not be removed with­out destruc­tion of the build­ing. It was sim­ply cov­ered with some­thing black and now there is a large black mass in the mid­dle of the hall. It is kind of dumb because we all know who it is. I did not watch tele­vi­sion, Russ­ian chan­nels and crude pro­pa­gan­da imme­di­ate­ly appeared on it. I learned every­thing I was inter­est­ed in from Telegram chan­nels and watched var­i­ous inter­est­ing videos on YouTube.

Final­ly, I left. My par­ents sup­port­ed me. How­ev­er, my grand­moth­er called me a trai­tor. I do not take offense at her, she is already an elder­ly per­son, and she can­not change. In gen­er­al, I think that in Donet­sk, about 20% of peo­ple are pro-Russ­ian, anoth­er 20% are pro-Ukrain­ian, and the rest are apo­lit­i­cal, indif­fer­ent.

I was com­ing through Euro­pean coun­tries. When I crossed the bor­der between Poland and Ukraine, the first thing I felt was hunger. It meant that I already felt safe. I am glad I left [the occu­pa­tion].

“In Donet­sk, there is a chic cin­e­ma named after Taras Shevchenko. There is a large stat­ue of the poet there, which can­not be removed with­out destruc­tion of the build­ing. It was sim­ply cov­ered with some­thing black and now there is a large black mass in the mid­dle of the hall. It is kind of dumb because we all know who it is”. Illus­tra­tion by Inga Levi