‘How old do you think I am?’

Disabled Ukrainian man returns home nearly two years after deportation to facility run by Putin’s children’s rights commissioner’s sister

In late 2023, the Russian authorities moved four adult residents of a care home for people with disabilities to the Russian city of Penza, where they were housed in a newly opened institution run by the sister of Russia’s children’s rights commissioner. Now, nearly two years later, one of them has finally been returned to Ukraine. Oleksandr Danylchuk told journalists that the residents were never asked whether they wanted to go to Russia and that his requests to return to Ukraine were ignored. Meduza has translated a report on his story from the independent outlet iStories.

Twenty-eight-year-old Oleksandr Danylchuk, a former resident of a care home for people with disabilities in Ukraine’s Kherson region, has returned to Ukraine after being taken to Russia against his will and placed in a facility run by Sofia Lvova-Belova, the sister of Russian Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova.

Last week, Maria Lvova-Belova announced that a “young adult with a disability” had been returned to Ukraine but did not disclose his name. Journalists from iStories later confirmed it was Danylchuk.

According to iStories and The Reckoning Project, which investigates war crimes in Ukraine, Danylchuk and three other adult residents of the Oleshky Care Home were taken to Russia in November 2023. They arrived in the city of Penza just days before Sofia Lvova-Belova opened her assisted living facility, New Shores, there. Local media reports on the launch said that the residents came from the “new regions,” Russia’s term for the Ukrainian territories it annexed in 2022.

Danylchuk said he and the others were told of their departure only a day before leaving Ukraine and were never asked if they wanted to move. “I told them I wanted to leave [Penza]. And [Sofia Lvova-Belova] said, ‘Well, maybe you’ll get used to us.’ I told her, ‘Sofia, how old do you think I am? Ten? How could I just get used to it? I have friends there [in Ukraine], I have foster parents there,’” he told iStories. Publicly, Lvova-Belova insisted that none of the Ukrainians taken to Penza wanted to return home.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion, the Ukrainians taken to Penza had grown up in the Oleshky Care Home for children with developmental disabilities. All of them were declared legally incapacitated, making it impossible for them to make their own legal and financial decisions.

Danylchuk spent most of his time at Stephen’s Home, an assisted living facility for adults with disabilities. The facility’s head, Viacheslav Shchyrskyi, had been preparing to become Danylchuk’s legal guardian, but the war prevented him from completing the paperwork.

It was Shchyrskyi’s persistence that made Danylchuk’s return possible, according to Viktoria Novikova, a researcher with The Reckoning Project. “This return happened because Shchyrskyi fought for Sasha. He sounded the alarm and spent more than a year and a half pressuring the Red Cross and other officials,” Novikova said. “Given the bureaucratic hurdles and all the displacement since the occupation, this is one of the most complicated cases I’ve seen. Danylchuk is now in a specialized residential facility in Ukraine.”

According to Novikova, the next priorities for Danylchuk’s supporters are finalizing the paperwork to transfer him to Shchyrskyi’s care and ensuring he receives the rehab treatment to recover from his time in Russian captivity.

Danylchuk is the 12th former resident of the Oleshky Care Home to return home from Russia. More than 50 others remain in occupied territory. The school’s underage residents now live in a boarding facility in the town of Skadovsk run by Vitalii Suk, a former driving instructor. The adult residents were placed in an institution in the village of Strilkove.

Three former Oleshky residents remain in Sofia Lvova-Belova’s Penza facility: Anastasiia Mamotiuk, Viktoria Markeliuk, and Anastasiia Yavorovska.