“My son is much stronger than the Russian soldiers who kidnapped him“: this is the conviction of Oleg Buryak. Aged 46, he heads the administration of the Zaporizhia district, in Ukraine. But in recent days, as the Russian offensive is about to enter its third month, he has not has more than one concern in mind: to free his 16-year-old son Vlad, kidnapped on April 8, 2022 while fleeing the city of Melitopol, in the occupied zone. “My son stayed 42 days in the city controlled by Russian soldiers. He had made the decision not to leave, because his grandfather was terminally ill with cancer. The grandfather died at 5:45 that morning, and my son left town at 8:00…“, he explains, wiping away a tear.
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On April 8, Vlad was traveling in a civilian evacuation convoy, but at the last Russian checkpoint of Vassylivka, at the gates of the free zone, the soldiers checked the identities of all the passengers.
After three hours, they let everyone go, except the boy: they had understood that they had a means of pressure on the Ukrainian side. Because it is one of the facets of the occupation of part of the Ukrainian territory by the Russian army: it is estimated that several thousand people are currently detained by the occupiers, kidnapped, outside of any legal framework. They are mainly pro-Ukrainian political activists, journalists, but also entrepreneurs and all kinds of people from whom the Russian soldiers can hope to obtain money or power.
Since then, Vlad has been detained by a Russian jailer, in an undisclosed location. “All I know is that he is alive and was able to speak on the phone with his mother for the first time in eleven days of detention. I was able to speak to him last Thursday. We try to support him psychologically, not to dramatize the situation, we tell him that we are taking care of getting him out of there, that the negotiations are difficult… but that we are not abandoning him!“
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As the talks are not progressing, Oleg has decided to make the case public to draw attention to the fate of his son, and that of thousands of people, often children, who were abducted in the occupation zone. Russian, since the beginning of the war. “Even in times of war, we cannot attack children, make them bargaining chips. We must keep them away from aggressive and crazy adult content“, he pleads.
“Children are sacred, we don’t touch them!”
Oleg Buryakat franceinfo
Ukraine estimates that 200 children have died from the consequences of the war since the start of the Russian invasion.