Story 2: Davyd
Davyd was 17 when his hometown, Mariupol, was occupied by the Russian Forces. He stayed there till April under heavy shelling and when trying to escape to Ukrainian controlled territory Davyd got imprisoned in an orphanage.
People story
Bohdan, a 35-year-old man on a wheelchair, was deported to Russia by Russian occupation authorities against his will, but he was able to get away.
Bohdan was a resident of a nursing home in Kakhovka, Kherson Region. There were 200 elderly people living with 40 middle-aged disabled men and women. When Kherson was under Russian occupation, the staff of the nursing house were able to remain at their workplaces. But after 7 months of occupation, Russians appointed new staff. They made the immediate decision to deport the residents of the nursing house.
Bohdan and others were told they were taken to Russia. The elderly and disabled people protested, but were helpless against the occupiers. They were taken by buses first to Jankoy, a city in Crimea. Bohdan and others were then transferred to trains headed for Voronezh, Russia. Upon arrival, the deported residents of the nursing house were separated and taken to different establishments.
There were terrible conditions in the place where Bohdan was staying. The man was isolated for the first month in Russia, without a connection via phone or the internet. He was forced to give up his Ukrainian residence and take Russian, but he refused. Bohdan was bullied numerous times by Russians for being Ukrainian..
Eventually, Bohdan managed to contact volunteers to help him escape the captivity. It was a long and hard way, but the volunteers freed the man from the nursing house he was staying in and traveled with him to Russia’s border. Bohdan ended up in Norway, where he stays now.
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Davyd was 17 when his hometown, Mariupol, was occupied by the Russian Forces. He stayed there till April under heavy shelling and when trying to escape to Ukrainian controlled territory Davyd got imprisoned in an orphanage.
Oleksandr lived with his mother and sister when the full-scale war began. Soon, the Russian troops occupied their city.
To survive Russian massive strikes on Mariupol, Yevhen with his son Matvii and daughter Svyatoslava were hiding in bomb shelters. In April, when Russian soldiers came, they gave people only 30 minutes to prepare for the forcible deportation, which they called “evacuation”.