‘I can only imagine what happened to him’

The mother of a non-verbal teen with autism recounts rescuing her son from a care facility in Crimea

Story by Anna Ryzhkova from Verstka Media. Translation by Sam Breazeale.

In March, a Ukrainian charity organized the return of 17 Ukrainian children who had been taken from the Kherson and Kharkiv regions and relocated to Russian and occupied territories. One of these children was a 16-year-old from Kherson named Sasha Mazur. Sasha has autism; unlike the other deported children who spent six months in Russian camps, he was held in a Simferopol psychiatric hospital and at a residential care facility. His parents learned about the evacuation from reports on Telegram. The independent Russian news outlet Verstka Media spoke with his mother, Olga Mazur, about how her son ended up in Crimea and what it took to get him back. In English, Meduza is publishing an abridged version of her account.

‘We planned to check up on our house and pick up Sasha’

My oldest son, Sasha, is currently 16 years old. He has autism. He doesn’t speak and he’s unable to sit still. From the time he was nine years old, Sasha lived at a care home for children with disabilities in Oleshky, on the east bank of the Dnipro — right across from Kherson. Right now, that territory is still occupied.

My husband and I never thought our son would live at a care home instead of with us. And at first, Sasha was enrolled in a specialized school in Kherson where the teachers worked with him one-on-one. But when they reduced the number of spots there, someone suggested the care home in Oleshky. One of our distant relatives worked there, and she told us the children there are treated well. I also liked that it was nearby; to see my son, all I had to do was go over the Antonivskyi Bridge to the east bank [of the Dnipro River].

That’s how Sasha began living at the care home. We brought him home for a few days about once a month. In spring 2022, my husband and I planned to go check on our house in the village and then to take Sasha home for good. But on February 24, these plans changed.

The war reached Sasha in Oleshky, while my husband, our younger son, and I were still in Kherson. After the fighting broke out, the care home started experiencing food and medication shortages, but volunteers helped out. I also tried to help the kids, or at least the ones in Sasha’s group — I baked rolls for them and sent them bags of sweets and fruits through volunteers.

In late July, the Ukrainian military blew up the Antonivskyi Bridge, making it impossible for us to get to Sasha. At the same time, the Russians replaced the care home’s director, and we weren’t able to reach the new one. We lost contact with the caregivers too; they stopped communicating. I was only able to get in touch with one teacher who had left Oleshky. Her former colleagues had told her, without giving any details, that things at the care home were fine.

‘Our relatives refused to help because of our political views’

In November, I read on a Telegram channel that my son and the other kids had been taken away. The post had a list of 12 children, one of whom was Sasha. It said he had ended up in a psychiatric hospital in Simferopol. I tried to find more details, and I called the other parents, but nobody knew anything. Two days later, the power went out, and we lost all means of communication.

It’s hard for me to remember those days; everything felt like a dream. If you survived the day, that was good news. If you were still awake in the morning, that was even better. We spent the entire occupation in Kherson, right up until its liberation. But we left for Ternopil [in western Ukraine] two weeks after the de-occupation — that’s when the firing began, and it became completely unsafe.

That entire time, I was asking teachers I knew about Sasha, trying to get them to contact Ukrainian volunteers. All in vain. Even the kids who can speak, and who had phone service, sent short messages that didn’t reveal any information. Things like, “We’re in Russia.” But Russia is huge!

I have relatives in Crimea, even in Simferopol itself. And I asked them to find out anything they could about this psychiatric hospital, even to go there and ask about Sasha. But they refused because of our political disagreements. Though they did say that everything was fine in Kherson, that nobody was shooting, and that we had supposedly been liberated by the Russians.

Until the start of January, I wasn’t unable to find any specific information, and I felt despondent. I met the New Year thinking about how my mom was under occupation, in Kakhovka, and how I had no clue where my son was.

‘They took us in to talk with FSB officers’

Shortly before we left Kherson, I had a conversation that I think was ultimately part of the reason we were reunited with our son. After the city was liberated, I was able to return to my job at the post office, and [Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister] Iryna Vereshchuk came [to visit my workplace]. I asked her questions about Sasha and about the evacuated care home. And some time later, employees from the charity foundation Save Ukraine contacted me.

They said my son was in a care home for children with disabilities in Bilohirsk, not far from Simferopol, and that they could get my son back if I was willing to go to Crimea. My first thought was to wonder whether I’d be able to return [to unoccupied Ukraine]. Some people had completely lost contact with their relatives as soon as they left Kherson. And I still have another son who really needs me, as well as elderly parents who need my help. But the charity workers reassured me.

We saved up for an expedited passport. It cost me 1,700 hryvnias (about $46), which is a lot — we’re currently living on about 2,000 hryvnias (about $54) a month. I got my documents and went with the other women to find our children. We had a long road ahead of us.

We met in Kyiv, and then got on a train and went to Poland, and then we went by minibus to Brest. Then we flew from Minsk to Moscow. When we landed and went to passport control, we had to undergo questioning. They took us all into a waiting room to talk with FSB officers.

They immediately asked me how I feel about the renaming of streets in Ukraine. For example, when streets are named after Stepan Bandera. I responded that I consider it a form of money laundering. I think I was worried about saying something they wouldn’t like.

They took our phones away for inspection. As far as I could tell, there were IT guys there along with FSB officers. When they gave me my phone back, I noticed they had turned on Bluetooth. They probably downloaded some data. We’d been warned that that could happen, so on the way to Moscow, we’d deleted everything we could.

Altogether, we spent six hours in the airport. The other moms and I didn’t talk much about what was happening; we were all just thinking about how to get our children and return home as soon as possible. Every conversation was about our children. Children, children, children.

Weight loss and bed sores

We traveled to Anapa through Rostov, where a volunteer met up with us. Per the agreement with Save Ukraine, his job was to help me get Sasha. The fact is, my son is very active, and we couldn’t predict how he would react to our reunion. We spent the night in Anapa, and we set out for Crimea the next morning. The other mothers were picking up their children from camps; I was the only one who went to the Bilohirsk care home, which was half an hour away from Simferopol.

We were met by the deputy director, who asked us to wait for the director, because he was the only one authorized to release my son. Thirty minutes later, they checked all my documents, gave me Sasha’s documents, and gave me some of the medication he’d been taking, and that was it; they wished us a good trip home.

In Bilohirsk, from what I understand, there were seven other people who were taken from Oleshky. Conditions in the care home looked superb to me. I was glad my Sasha had ended up there [as opposed to a different facility in Crimea]. I saw a sports complex with swings. Swinging is his favorite activity. I don’t know whether they had a rehab program for children with ASD there; I didn’t even think to ask.

When we met, my son recognized me. He gave me his hand and started pulling me towards the exit. I can’t say exactly what this reaction meant. His actions can sometimes be hard to decipher. But when I would visit him at his “home” care facility in Oleshky, it would sometimes take 20–30 minutes of me being next to him on the swings before he would stop pushing me away with his hand and would be okay with physical contact. But this time, he did it immediately. That was really nice for me as a mother.

I was later told that when Sasha was first brought to that care home [in Bilohirsk], he refused to eat for two weeks. The employees got worried, and they even took him to the hospital; a child can’t go that long without eating. But things gradually got better.

At the care home, they gave me a report about the state of Sasha’s health when he first got there. It said that when he arrived at Bilohirsk, he was severely underweight and had bedsores. That scared me, because I know that Sasha’s very active; he rarely sits in one place or lies down. I can only imagine what had happened in Oleshky over the previous four months. If I hadn’t gotten that document, I never would have learned about it from anyone; after all, Sasha doesn’t speak.

I often think about what might have happened to the other children from our care home — the bedridden ones and the ones in wheelchairs. Not all of them have involved parents, and it’s not clear who’s going to pick them up, or in what conditions they’re currently living.

‘Whatever happens next, Sasha will be with us’

We returned home through Anapa, Rostov-on-Don, and Minsk. I didn’t exhale until we made it to the Ukrainian border. I realized I felt safe here; nobody’s going to hurt me.

Sasha did fine on the trip; it wasn’t until the very end that he began to feel bad and started yelling and trying to get out. A volunteer helped me restrain him. In Kyiv, we were met by a crowd of journalists, but my son stayed in the car — I didn’t want the crowd of people to scare him. A few days later, my husband picked us up from Kyiv. On the way [to Ukraine], I had shown Sasha photos of his dad, and it was clear that he recognized him. He smiled and got excited.

We returned to Ternopil, where we’re currently renting a small house. Sasha’s with us constantly. There’s a care home for special needs kids nearby, but sending Sasha there isn’t even on the table, after what we went through. Whatever happens next, Sasha will be with us, even though it’s hard. For example, Sasha goes to bed at 9:00 p.m., gets up at 3:00 a.m., and doesn’t sleep after that. And when he’s not sleeping, nobody’s sleeping. He hums, plays, and gets us out of bed to go to the bathroom with him.

Vova, our younger son, thinks Sasha was at school this entire time. He’s actually afraid of his brother because Sasha has hurt him a few times, pushing or hitting him. Vova doesn’t go to sleep until Sasha does; he just lies in bed and waits. I think it will pass eventually, but for now, that’s the way it is.

As a mother, I think about how if Sasha hadn’t been deported, he might no longer be alive. Either because of the poor care he was given at our care home after they installed a Russian director, or because of the fighting.

They didn’t do anything bad to my Sasha. But if you look at it from a legal standpoint, it’s abduction. Because they weren’t able to set up a humanitarian corridor and evacuate the children earlier.

Psychologists say it will be at least three weeks before the other children who have returned start communicating about what really happened to them, when their shock passes. Of course, my boy can’t say a word.

Story by Anna Ryzhkova from Verstka Media

Translation by Sam Breazeale