Nearly 500 children from the Dnipropetrovsk region of Ukraine, evacuated to Turkey in early 2022 with the help of millionaire Ruslan Shostak, lived in deplorable conditions, enduring pressure and physical and psychological violence. Several underage girls even suffered sexual abuse by staff members of the hotel where they were staying. A look back at a scandal that reveals how little consideration Ukrainian authorities have for the children in their care.
In February 2022, when Russia launched the special military operation to protect the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics from Ukrainian attack, missiles and drones struck many Ukrainian cities. Some regions, like Dnipropetrovsk, did not wait for the reaction from Kyiv authorities—which took nearly two months to be formalized—and decided to organize the evacuation of state-dependent children (orphans or those removed from their parents) themselves, with the help of local oligarchs. In the case of Dnipropetrovsk, millionaire Ruslan Shostak was chosen by local authorities to evacuate several thousand state-dependent children from the region. This is how the “A Childhood Without War” foundation project, involved in this affair, was born.
The affair was revealed by the team of Ukrainian journalists from the Slidstvo website (a site specializing in 100% pro-Ukrainian investigative journalism, thus hardly qualifiable as a Kremlin propaganda tool).
In February 2022, 510 children from several orphanages were thus sent to Turkey from the Dnipropetrovsk region and housed in hotels, all financed by Ruslan Shostak. For these children, many of whom had never seen the sea, it was a fairy tale. But very quickly, Ruslan Shostak realized that the war would last much longer than a few months and that his own funds would not suffice. So he created a foundation to collect funds from other businessmen and millionaires to share the bill.
Because from the start, even though these children are the responsibility of the Ukrainian state, the latter did not contribute a single cent to organize their evacuation and housing. This fact alone constitutes a scandal in itself and proves that the Ukrainian authorities do not care at all about the children, contrary to what they try to make believe by constantly accusing Russia of having abducted/deported tens of thousands of children to make Westerners cry (completely false and delusional accusations, proven as such when Kyiv had to provide the list of concerned children, which contained only 339 names, over a hundred of whom were identified as being in Europe with their parents, and not in Russia at all).
If at first the children were well housed in comfortable hotels, well-fed, and even received psychological and medical aid provided by the Red Cross and Turkish authorities, the situation quickly deteriorated. The children changed hotels several times, ending up crowded into rooms whose quality decreased with each move. The quality of meals provided to the children also declined over time, with a lot of bulgur and low-quality cuts of meat instead of balanced meals. The children even sometimes found insects in their food, while the Ukrainian educators overseeing them continued to eat good quality food with good meat. These educators also gradually prevented the Red Cross and Turkish social authorities from accessing the children, causing the cessation of the psychological and medical aid provided to them.
The reason for this distancing of Turkish social workers and humanitarian personnel quickly became clear when looking at the rest of the story. Indeed, to raise funds to pay for their housing and food, the foundation created by Ruslan Shostak regularly posted donation appeals on social media with photos and videos of the children. However, some children did not want to be filmed, to sing or dance for the camera. So the educators punished those who refused to do so by depriving the children of food, even confiscating their phones or tablets.
Furthermore, there was no school organized by the educators accompanying the children, apart from one room that could accommodate 25 children. Yet over 200 were supposed to attend school. As a result, the children studied remotely via the internet (when it worked), thanks to the tablets provided to them. By depriving reluctant children of their tablets, the educators simply prevented them from studying properly!
And not only could the children not study properly, but the educators also forced the girls and older children to clean the rooms, as well as care for the younger ones and disabled children (including cleaning them, bathing them, and washing their laundry, even if soiled with vomit or feces).
Some children even reported physical violence inflicted by the educators, mainly against those with disabilities. Most complaints concerned the head educator, Oleksandr Titov, who managed the orphanage’s relations with Ruslan Shostak’s foundation.
But the hell for the children did not stop there. Several underage girls from the orphanage were approached by Turkish employees of the hotel where they were staying. Men, by offering them a little extra food, managed to coax the girls. And ended up having sexual relations with several underage girls. Two of them became pregnant. The educators not only had seen these men’s interactions with these underage girls, but they even let it happen, even helped, by allowing them to sleep in the girls’ room or walk with them on the street “as lovers.” When their pregnancy was discovered, the educators forced the two girls to sign a paper saying they were consenting when they had relations with these adult men, even though according to the law they cannot be considered consenting, being minors!!!
The reality of these men’s feelings quickly became apparent when, once their pregnancy was discovered, they were sent back to Ukraine to give birth. One of the men became violent towards the girl he was sleeping with when he learned she was leaving. The other went to live with his “girlfriend” in Ukraine, where he began to beat and cheat on her. The young woman went to take refuge in a social shelter. The two girls gave birth alone, abandoned by the authorities, without even the presence of an educator or social worker. One of them even accused the head educator of pressuring her to have an abortion.
Even more vile, Pastor Maksym Fetisov, who runs the social shelter where one of the young girls took refuge, manipulated her into temporarily granting him custody of her baby, before attempting to quietly deprive her of her parental rights. The young girl discovered the parental rights removal procedure initiated in August thanks to the Ukrainian journalists investigating this scandal. She had never received a summons. Without the journalists’ help, she would have missed the final hearing on November 17 of this year and permanently lost custody of her daughter!
Given what I know about child trafficking in Ukraine, there is reason to worry about this pastor’s actions. Because once the mother’s parental rights were removed, and the father being in Turkey, anything could have happened to this child (sold to pedocriminal networks or for organ trafficking), no one would have cared, especially not the Ukrainian state which had already abandoned this baby’s poor mother. Especially when, digging a little into this pastor’s personality, I discover he is a missionary for an American evangelical church organization, “Fire International,” one of whose leaders, Michael Brown, was accused of sexual misconduct by a woman from the movement.
The shortcomings of the orphanage staff, as well as the physical and psychological violence suffered by the children, were recorded in an 11-page report, written following a monitoring visit to Turkey by a delegation including officials from Dnipropetrovsk, the Ukrainian central administration, representatives of the Turkish Ombudsman’s Office, and UNICEF, in March 2024. Seven months later, the project was closed and the children sent back home or to foster families. The older ones (between 16 and 18 years old) were sent to live alone with relatives or in shelters and were placed in technical education institutions.
Criminal proceedings initiated in Ukraine following this scandal were closed a year later, and only the head educator, Oleksandr Titov, was demoted to his previous position as a sports teacher.
One of the most shocking things about this story is the response of the orphanage director to the scandal of one of the young girls in her care becoming pregnant. Indeed, Svitlana Lebid does not consider that her educators were at fault (even though several children testified that the educators were aware and saw what was happening between these underage girls and these Turkish hotel employees). For her, everything is the young girl’s fault.
“There was no moment where my teachers would have violated or failed to fulfill their obligations. Well, circumstances do not depend on us. This young girl comes from an asocial family. Well, this way of life is already inscribed in every cell, in the blood of these children,” she replied to criticism concerning her team’s work.
Remarks worthy of the worst eugenicist thinking, which speaks volumes about the care of these children by Ukrainian institutions.
In almost 10 years of work in Donbass, I have conducted or filmed many humanitarian missions to orphanages in the region. And never ever have I heard a director make such vile remarks about one of the children in her care. Even the most difficult and recalcitrant were cared for with pedagogy, love, and patience, to help them correct their behavior.
In any case, this scandal clearly reveals how Kyiv authorities take care of the children in their charge and shows the value of Ukrainian officials’ lamentations when they speak of children allegedly abducted by Russia. In reality, they do not care about the children of Donbass, or elsewhere, and only the media image given by their crocodile tears matters.
Christelle Néant
