VITALIY Vertash was told he and his school were going on a two-week holiday to Crimea in early October – but what awaited him was a horror unlike any other.
Vitaliy, 16, was just one of thousands of Ukrainian children who was kidnapped by Russia and kept from his home and family for months.
Vitaliy returned to his family in Kyiv after six months in a Russian campCredit: Save Ukraine
Children as young as three have been torn apart from their familiesCredit: Telegram
Putin and his Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova have led the illegal kidnapping effortsCredit: AFP
Russia is estimated to have kidnapped well over 20,000 Ukrainian children since the start of the war, and sending them to become “Russified”.
The children who resist the indoctrination from Russian forces are locked up and often times drugged, while others are sent to fight against their home country as soldiers.
Vitaliy told The Times: “That’s what I thought was going to happen to me. They told me my mum had abandoned me.”
The truth was, Vitaliy’s mother Inessa was working hard to bring back her eldest son – enlisting the help of an organisation who took six days to reach where Vitaliy was.
Vitaliy was stuck in a room with four others, and only fed soup and buckwheat while facing beatings from the “camp employees.”
He recalled one instance where a 13-year-old girl in the camp screamed as she was raped by the Russian “counsellors”.
The teen recalled 7am parades and being forced to listen to the Russian anthem for hours.
Later in the day, the kidnapped children were taught about the “Russian system”, and told how bad Ukraine was.
One day while going to the shop with his friend, the camp director believed he had been passing information to Ukraine – and was locked in the basement for hours as punishment.
Shockingly, Vitaliy and his friend Olha were paraded around and called traitors while other children jeered at them and shouted “Glory to Russia.”
Vitaliy was rescued and brought back to Kyiv, where he’s receiving counselling and trying to return to normal life.
He said: “It’s so good to wake up in the morning and not have to sing the Russian anthem.
“I feel free, I love exploring Kyiv, going to McDonald’s and watching the bungee jumpers from the bridge over the Dnipro River. One day I’d like to do that.”
The true horrors of the “re-education camps” echo that of Nazi Germany, and have turned countless innocent children into “Russian Zombies”.
Last year, a Sun investigation revealed Vlad’s crony Maria Lvova Belova had headed up an organisation tasked with putting kidnapped Ukrainian children into Russian homes.
A member of the organisation, Into the Hands of Children, has now been linked to a Neo-Nazi group, while another sponsored a chilling anti-LGBTQ bill, according to a report by the Ukrainian military investigations site Molfar.
At every stage, the children are subjected to “information zombification” while being told they have been abandoned by their parents and bribed with sweets and gadgets – such as Vitaliy was.
It’s a sickening way of enacting Putin’s total cleansing of Ukrainian culture.
Up to 5,000 adults were also kidnapped by Russian forces in besieged Mariupol and sent to work camps in Russia.
Ukrainian MP Inna Sovsun told Times Radio people were being taken to “very distant parts of Russia” and “forced to sign papers saying that they will stay in that area for two or three years and they will work for free in those areas”.
Asked if this was slave labour, she said: “It is, yes. It is.”
The horrors brought on Ukrainians by Russia’s onslaught are far reaching, as it was revealed this week that over 80 per cent of Ukrainians have seen loved ones killed in the conflict.
The conflict has had a devastating toll, with 78 per cent of the population of around 30million having a relative or friend killed in the war and 6.3million still classed as refugees.
But Ukraine has shown remarkable resilience — the economy is bouncing back and is on target for a modest rise this year, while support for the war remains undiminished.
The “camps” indoctrinate children to love RussiaCredit: conflictobservatory
Russia Children’s Commissioner Maria visited one of these campsCredit: Telegram
Some of the facilities which hold the kidnapped childrenCredit: conflictobservatory
Teddy bears and children’s toys have been placed to raise awareness of the stolen childrenCredit: AP
The lives of children across Ukraine have been ruined by Putin’s ruthless tactics
