On February 26, 2022, Oleksandr Mustjatse turned 15 years old.
Two days earlier, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Mustjatse's home village of Krynky in the Kherson region was occupied and the boy disappeared. Since then, he has been listed on a Ukrainian register of children considered missing or forcibly displaced because of the war.
But now Mustjatse has appeared - as a Russian soldier.
Posing in uniform
The Ukrainian activist group Back to Ukraine has found his page on the Russian social network Vkontakte, something that exiled Russian Meduza, among others, reported. On the page, as seen by TT, the now 19-year-old man poses in a military uniform and cap with the letter Z, a Russian symbol for war.
“Russia has always been in my heart,” he answers the activist group's question about why he fights for the Russian side.
Mustjatse's mother also now lives in Russia with her husband, reports Vazjnye istorii, a Russian exile site for independent journalism.
The case is the first of its kind, according to Back to Ukraine.
However, it is well known that Ukrainian children were taken to Russia or moved from one Russian-occupied area to another during the war. The UN has documented 1,200 cases, but according to Ukraine, it is about 20,000 young people - of whom just over 2,400 have returned.
Russia claims that these are temporary evacuations for security reasons. Since 2023, both Russian President Vladimir Putin and the country's children's ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova have been wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes over the abductions.
Film and weapons
In a report published last year by the organization War Child, the British think tank Human Security Center and the Ukrainian Save Ukraine, 200 children testified about their lives as abductees. Just over half stated that they had been subjected to indoctrination through various school programs and other activities. For example, they were shown films that aimed to give an "accurate" picture of history and were encouraged to participate in "military-patriotic" camps where they were dressed in uniform and trained in handling weapons.
“For a child who lives in such a reality for years, war becomes not just normal, but a duty,” writes Ukraine's former children's ombudsman Mykola Kuleba on Instagram.
Back to Ukraine is not open about who they are, but describes itself as an “independent and self-governing citizens' initiative”.
"We believe that it is currently more effective to work in a format that is closed to the public," is the answer when TT asks them on social media if they have chosen to remain anonymous for security reasons.
