Kiev and Moscow announced on Friday (November 10th) an agreement for the repatriation of a 17-year-old Ukrainian orphan, transferred to Russia from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol after its occupation by the Russian army, after a bloody siege.
To discover
- Follow the news on the war in Ukraine with the Le Figaro app
The announcement comes in the wake of the teenager's plea for help to President Volodymyr Zelensky. "I ask you, Volodymyr Oleksandrovych, to help me return home," he said in a short video posted by his Ukrainian lawyer on social media.
Agreement reached
«
Bogdan Yermokhin will soon be in Ukraine," the Ukrainian parliament's commissioner for human rights, Dmytro Lubinets, announced on Telegram on Friday, reporting an "agreement" on his repatriation. Russia's children's commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, said on Telegram that the two countries had agreed for the young man to be reunited with his cousin, his legal guardian in Ukraine, "in a third country" on his 18th birthday, November 19. Bogdan Yermokhin lived in Mariupol, a large industrial city in southeastern Ukraine and, according to media reports, was receiving training in the metallurgy sector there at the time of the Russian invasion in February 2022.
Along with a group of Ukrainian miners from Mariupol, he was first transferred to Donetsk, the regional capital under Russian control, and then to the Moscow region, according to the Ukrainian website Graty. The Russian authorities issued him the passport of that country, as well as to many Ukrainians from occupied areas. According to Graty, Bogdan Yermokhin was recently summoned by the Russian army to prepare his military documents, a common practice in Russia where any young man can be called up for military service from the age of 18.
Read alsoIn Ukraine, the summer camp for war orphans: the account of Le Figaro's special correspondent
In March, he tried to flee Russia to Ukraine before being detained by Russian security forces near the Belarusian border. Lvova-Belova said he had at one point wanted to stay in Russia before changing his mind. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ms Lvova-Belova are accused by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of war crimes for the "illegal deportation" of thousands of Ukrainian children. These accusations are strongly rejected by Moscow.