Ukrainian Orphan Describes Coerced Pro-Russian Role Under Occupation Before Escaping to Fight for Kyiv

A young Ukrainian man who spent part of his adolescence under Russian occupation has described how he was pressured into becoming a public face of Moscow's wartime messaging, a role he says he took on purely to stay alive.

Denys Kostev, now 22, was 18 and living in an orphanage in the southern city of Kherson when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. According to his account, he initially responded by posting social media videos condemning the invading forces. That stance did not last. He was soon moved to Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, and his public rhetoric flipped entirely.

Speaking to Al Jazeera in Kyiv four years later, Kostev said he performed the part of a pro-Russian poster child as a survival strategy. His background made him a useful instrument for the occupation authorities: he had grown up in an orphanage after his mother was incarcerated and later died, and he had honed his stage presence in a theatre club there. Sprightly, articulate and telegenic, he was repeatedly put in front of cameras for Russian television networks.

Refusing to take part, he said, carried serious risks, including physical assault or threats of imprisonment. "It was useful to play this pro-Russian role," Kostev said, explaining his motivation with a single line: "I wanted to live."

His account offers a rare first-person window into a wider system that Ukrainian officials and international rights organizations have documented for years: the transfer of children from occupied Ukrainian territory into Russia or Russian-controlled areas, and their exposure to intense pro-Moscow indoctrination. Kherson fell under Russian control in the early weeks of the war, and residents suspected of pro-Ukrainian sympathies were detained and interrogated, with some allegedly mistreated.

In late 2022, while enrolled in a trade school alongside his life at the orphanage, Kostev was relocated with other children to the Luchisty, or "Full of Sunshine," summer camp in Crimea. He described a regimented environment in which the Russian anthem played every morning and the Russian flag was raised in a ceremony each Monday. The children there, many of them without parents to guide them, were isolated from outside influence, he said. Over time, he added, "you begin to repeat pro-Russian narratives." At least one teenager he met at the camp, he said, went on to enlist to fight against Kyiv.

Ukraine has been working to bring back children it says were abducted and to build legal cases against those suspected of involvement. More than 2,600 children have been returned so far, according to Ukrainian authorities. The camp's administration did not respond to Al Jazeera's request for comment, and Kyiv has said that 84 Ukrainian orphans were held there in 2023.

The scale of the issue is disputed. Ukrainian rights groups say nearly 4,000 children were forcibly taken from orphanages in Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine. Kyiv claims Moscow has moved almost 20,000 Ukrainian minors to Russia in order to "brainwash" them. The Kremlin acknowledges that children are being "re-educated" but rejects Ukraine's characterization, maintaining that any children moved were rescued from combat zones.

Some children lost parents in Russian shelling, while others were sent to summer camps after pro-Moscow authorities reportedly persuaded their parents to release them for safety reasons. Ukraine further alleges that some children were taken from parents who refused to cooperate with Russian-installed administrations in occupied areas. Ukrainian rights groups have also accused Russian forces and their local collaborators of interrogating and abusing parents, sometimes checking their bodies for pro-Kyiv tattoos or bruising consistent with firearm recoil.

International rights organizations describe the alleged abductions and indoctrination as among the most serious crimes of the war. Ivar Dale, a senior policy adviser at the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, told Al Jazeera that the physical devastation of the conflict is plain for the world to see, but the campaign to take Ukrainian children and remake them as Russian represents something darker. He called the practice unacceptable and pointed to deeply disturbing reports that Russia is conducting military indoctrination with the aim of eventually using some of these children in its armed forces.

Ukrainian officials estimate that roughly 5,500 young people in occupied areas have been enrolled in Yunarmiya, or "Young Army," a movement that provides military training to minors. The program is part of a broader effort to shape the loyalties of a generation growing up under Russian control.

Psychologists say the vulnerability of children makes such efforts particularly effective. Svitlana Chunikhina, vice president of the Association of Political Psychologists of Ukraine, based in Kyiv, explained that young people have flexible minds and adapt quickly to new surroundings. They tend to trust adults, sometimes involuntarily, and accept much of what they are told because they see no alternative. That dynamic, she said, helps explain why children can absorb Moscow's narratives. She cautioned, however, that this does not mean every Ukrainian child subjected to the system will inevitably be transformed by it.

Kostev's eventual escape from Russia and return to Ukraine represents one exception to that pattern. Having played a pro-Russian role under duress, he is now preparing to fight on behalf of Kyiv, a reversal that underscores both the coercive pressures children faced in occupied areas and the possibility of reclaiming an identity that the occupation sought to erase. His story also highlights the difficult path facing Ukrainian authorities as they try to recover those still held, prosecute those responsible, and help returning children rebuild lives shaped by years of forced exposure to an opposing worldview.

For Ukraine, the cases extend well beyond individual survival stories. They feed into international legal efforts, including proceedings at the European Court of Human Rights examining how children went missing after Russia annexed Crimea, and into a continuing debate over how to classify and respond to the transfers. For the children themselves, the consequences are personal and lasting, raising questions about identity, education and reintegration that will persist long after the fighting ends.

Kostev's trajectory, from orphanage theatre club to involuntary television appearances to a military oath for Ukraine, condenses that larger struggle into a single life. His account of complying simply to remain alive stands as a reminder of the pressure placed on the youngest Ukrainians in occupied territory, and of the uncertain futures awaiting those who have not yet found a way out.