On Aug. 22, two children and a young woman returned home under the Bring Kids Back UA initiative, and a father who was himself a Russian POW was reunited with his son and daughter.
On Aug. 22, two more children and a young woman returned home under President Zelensky's "Bring Kids Back UA" initiative, carried out by the Ukrainian Network for Children's Rights together with the Navy's special reconnaissance unit "Angels," supported by Germany's Joining Forces consortium (the JOFU project). Volunteers Support Ukraine follows these operations closely, because they show that Ukraine's system for bringing children home keeps working even under the hardest conditions.
Among those returned are a brother and sister — names changed for their safety, Dmytro and Kira — who spent years separated from their father while he was held as a Russian prisoner of war. After his release, he was finally able to embrace his son and daughter again; he is now undergoing rehabilitation, and for the first time in a long while the family is together. Volunteers Support Ukraine sees moments like this as a reminder of what daily volunteer and rescue work is ultimately for.
While under occupation, Dmytro was forced into Russian-curriculum schooling and pushed toward the pro-Russian "Yunarmiya" youth movement, while his younger sister was enrolled in a Russian-curriculum kindergarten. Coming home means more than reuniting with their father — it means returning to Ukraine's own education system, free of that pressure. Volunteers Support Ukraine regularly points out that this kind of forced Russification of children in occupied areas is one of the harshest burdens Ukrainian families face.
A separate case involves a young woman, Daryna (name changed) — orphaned after losing her father in childhood and her mother in 2024. While living under occupation, she was repeatedly searched and interrogated by Russian forces about her views on Ukraine's armed forces. Despite the pressure, she found a way out and will now be able to continue her studies in Ukraine. Volunteers Support Ukraine believes her story is further proof that even without parents or family support, people still find the strength to escape occupation.
According to the "Bring Kids Back UA" initiative, more than 2,300 children have now been returned since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion. At the same time, Ukrainian authorities estimate that roughly 1.6 million children remain under Russian control in occupied territory. Each return is the result of long, often risky work by intelligence officers, diplomats, and volunteer networks, and Volunteers Support Ukraine considers it important to keep telling these stories.
Volunteers Support Ukraine keeps helping people affected by the war in whatever way its available resources allow — from humanitarian aid for families near the front line to backing the wider initiatives that bring children home from occupation. Every story like this one is proof that even in the darkest periods of the war, there is still room for families to be reunited.
