Happy family reunion: 11-year-old Denys returned from the TOT of Donetsk region

Denis*, an 11-year-old resident of Mariupol, has not seen his mother since the beginning of the large-scale invasion. For two long years, the woman has been looking for a way to bring her son to the government-controlled territory. She succeeded thanks to the efforts of the Ukrainian Child Rights Network and the Ministry of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine.

Denis’s mother is a military servicewoman who defends our homeland with arms in her hands. By the will of fate, her son has had to live near Mariupol with his bedridden grandmother all this time.

The boy’s mother tried different ways – she could not take the child out of the temporarily occupied territory on her own. The woman had little hope that it would work, but in her heart she cherished the hope of meeting her son.

Eventually, she turned to the Ministry of Reintegration for help. As always, in tandem with the Ukrainian Child Rights Network, the Ministry’s specialists arranged the return.

Today, a woman met her son at the border with Ukraine. A long-awaited touching meeting…

* The child’s name has been changed for safety reasons

===

“The Way Home” is a project aimed at finding and returning children displaced to Russia or to the non-government controlled areas of Ukraine, as well as reuniting families whose children are without parents during the occupation. The project is implemented by the Ukrainian Child Rights Network in partnership with Save the Children in Ukraine.

Our other partners are: Ministry of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine, Office of the Ombudsman of Ukraine, EDUKIDS Charitable Foundation, Media Initiative for Human Rights.

The materials developed within the project do not necessarily reflect the official position of Save the Children.