- Bohdan Yermokhin, 17, is set to return to Ukraine after being stuck in Russia for a year.
- In 2022, Yermokhin was taken from Mariupol to Russia, where he was sent to a foster home.
- His status in Russia surged to the fore after his lawyer said he was told to join the Russian army.
A 17-year-old Ukrainian who was taken from Ukraine to Russia during the war received a call-up to enlist in the Kremlin’s forces, the BBC reported.
Bohdan Yermokhin, a teenager originally from the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, was taken to Russia after the city was seized by Russian forces in April 2022, according to his lawyer, Kateryna Bobrovska.
At the time, Yermokhin had been living with a relative in Mariupol because he was orphaned in 2014, according to Bobrovska.
He was then “illegally deported” by Russia to Moscow, per Bobrovska, and sent to live with a foster family there.
As he was living in Russia, Yermokhin was issued a call-up order to report on December 13 for a military draft in Moscow, Bobrovska told Ukrainian media on November 7.
The BBC confirmed this with Yermokhin’s guardian in Russia, Irina Rudnitskaya, and reported that he was enrolled into a college in Russia and given Russian documents.
Still, Rudnitskaya told the BBC it was was unlikely Yermokhin would have been sent to fight his own countrymen because he would be a new recruit.
“He is a student,” she told the BBC, saying that new recruits “do not take part in the Special Military Operation.”
