The boy is only 11 years old, but has already experienced tragic events - the bombs in Mariupol, the death of her mother, a serious injury, terror, deportation, returning with hardships to Ukraine. Before DV, Ilya tells his story.
One evening Ilya and his mother came out of the basement where they were hiding to ask a neighbor for water and some food. Everything around was destroyed, shots were heard from all sides. “We didn't reach the neighbor,”, says Ilya. “A rocket exploded nearby. Mom fell to the ground. The next day he died.“
The Ukrainian boy Ilya is from Mariupol in South-Eastern Ukraine, who after the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, became a symbol of Russian terror. During the three-month siege of Mariupol, the Russian army almost completely destroyed the city and massacred tens of thousands of civilians. Among them is Natalia Matvienko, Ilya's mother.
Thousands of kidnapped Ukrainian children
The boy was seriously injured in his right leg. Russian soldiers found him and took him to a hospital in Donetsk. Ilya was supposed to be placed with a Russian family, but his grandmother managed to take him in with her in Uzhhorod, the westernmost Ukrainian city. Immediately after that, Ilya testified before the International Criminal Court in The Hague – thus contributing to the issuance of an international arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova.
Ilya is one of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children abducted by Russian soldiers in the occupied territories. Official Ukrainian figures state that it is about 19,000 deported minors. In the summer of 2023, Lvova-Belova boasted that the Russian authorities had “saved“ 700,000 Ukrainian children. So far, Ukraine has managed to return only about 400.
Genocide and elimination of Ukrainian identity
This case is one of the worst war crimes in Europe since the Second World War. Ukrainian lawyer Oleksandra Matviychuk is adamant that Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine. “These crimes are not random and they are not an accident – they are a method of Russia and a tactic of the Russian military leadership against Ukraine," Matviychuk told DV. “The children are sent to re-education camps, they are told that they are Russians and their homeland is Russia. Then they are placed in Russian families. This is a policy of eliminating the Ukrainian identity and a policy of genocide.“
Ilya was also threatened by such a fate. He lived with his mother in the eastern part of Mariupol and was in the third grade. He says he liked to go to the movies in his free time and play in the park.
„Evacuation!“
After the Russian attack on Mariupol, Ilya and his mother lived for a while in a hotel in the city center, but at some point the mother decided to return to their home in the suburbs – hoping to find more food there as well. And they really found it in the basement of another house, where they hid until the day they tried to go to the neighbor.
Ilya says that after the rocket attack, the neighbor came and carried his seriously injured mother to her apartment. The boy no longer remembers exactly how his mother died. And the next day the Russian soldiers came, they said simply “Evacuation!“ and took him with them.
„The trip to the hospital in Donetsk was terrible. "My injured leg hurt so much that I can't describe it at all," says the boy. In the hospital, Ilya's leg was operated on. He said he had a grandmother who could take him, but after a few days people from the hospital informed him that they would take him to Moscow – in a new family. "I didn't answer because I didn't know if they would do something to me if I objected," says Ilya.
Grandma's Odyssey
There were many Ukrainian children in the hospital, journalists also came and took pictures, says Ilya. By pure chance, Ilya's grandmother – Olena Matvienko – found a video on social networks in which she saw her grandson. She immediately called the hospital and said she would come pick him up. Immediately after that, she set off on her way to occupied Donetsk – from Uzhgorod in Western Ukraine through Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Russia.
For this odyssey, Olena Matvienko should not give details – the return of Ilya and another girl was organized with the cooperation of the Ukrainian government and a Russian businessman. In order not to put further similar actions under threat, only this can be said: Ilya and his grandmother managed to return at the end of April to Ukraine via Turkey. “I cried when my grandson and I crossed the border to Ukraine,” says the grandmother.
„I have to tell“
In Ukraine, Ilya was sent to a Kyiv hospital for rehabilitation. There, an adviser to Ukrainian President Zelensky came to him and asked him if he was ready to tell his story to the investigators of the International Tribunal in The Hague. Ilya agreed. And he not only testified before the court, but also spoke before representatives of the UN, met with many Western politicians, including in the USA and in Germany. “I realized I had to do this – in order not to show indifference, to know that this really happened”, Ilya explains to DV.
Isn't it too painful for him to tell his story over and over again? “No, I understood that this is my fate and that is why I do not cry. "I never once cried while I was telling," Ilya replies. And he adds that his grandmother was constantly crying while he was talking.
„I may die tomorrow. This is war“
65-year-old Olena Matvienko has been a worker in Mariupol all her life, including in the "Azovstal" metallurgical plant, which in 2022 became a symbol of resistance against the Russian occupiers. She had four children. Her one son died in the fighting in Eastern Ukraine, her only daughter is also a victim of the war – Ilya's mother.
In 2017, Olena left Mariupol for Uzhhorod – to be as far as possible from the then military clashes in the so-called "Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics". Her pension is about 67 euros per month, but she donates part of it to the Ukrainian fighters every month. “I wouldn't trade Ukraine for anything else in the world, but it would be good to receive slightly higher pensions,”, she notes.
„I dream of becoming a doctor“
In Uzhhorod, Ilya and his grandmother live in shared accommodation with other people, they do not have their own bathroom. They want a real bathroom with a shower and would rather live in their own little house. Ilya says: “I long for the sea, I want pizza, like I used to eat on the way to school. I miss the city and, of course, my mother. May God rest her soul“.
Ilya says that he does not expect the international arrest warrant against Putin to have an effect. “He is an idiot, but it is clear to him that he can no longer travel everywhere.“ Ilya himself wants to become a doctor one day. “I don't know if I will make it because everything is so hopeless. But this is my dream. And I might be dead tomorrow – it's war, after all.“