The occupiers unlawfully detained a 17-year-old resident of the temporarily occupied Kherson region after he attempted to travel to territory controlled by Ukraine.
This was reported by the Center for Journalistic Investigations.
The boy was detained after his pro-Russian mother went to the occupation police to report him missing.
According to sources from the Center for Journalistic Investigations, the young man planned to leave the occupied area before reaching adulthood due to fears of forced mobilization into the Russian army. He independently found a driver and set off, but was detained by Russian security forces at one of the checkpoints in Luhansk region near the exit from the occupied territory. After the mother’s report, occupation forces conducted a sweep in the village where the boy lived.
“It turned into a real horror for the whole village. Representatives of the Russian National Guard together with the occupation police carried out a large-scale sweep with searches, beating many people. They were looking for those who organized and assisted the boy’s departure, extracting confessions under torture, but they found no one. The Russians brutally beat the boy’s elderly relative, kidnapped and tortured his father, and threatened to kill him. To be left alive, he agreed to sign a contract to serve in the Russian army”, – sources from the Center for Journalistic Investigations said.
Later, villagers learned that the occupiers had allegedly sentenced the young man to 12 years in prison on charges of state treason.