ST. PETERSBURG, Russia -- In the middle of December, an elderly Ukrainian woman in a kerchief stood in an office on Russia's border with Estonia. Her daughter, Olha, was waiting for her at the train station in the Estonian city of Narva, hoping to be reunited with her mother, who had been taken to Russia by occupying forces in early June 2022.
But Estonian border guards refused to admit her, saying she had been in Russia too long.
The Russian volunteers assisting Hanna knew the only remaining way to get her out of Russia would be via the Kolotilovka-Pokrovka border crossing between Russia's western Belgorod region and Ukraine's Sumy region. The last 2 kilometers of that journey, they warned her, must be made on foot.
"That's OK," the 86-year-old mother of four said, despite the freezing temperatures. "I will make it. I have my cane."
Kyiv and international rights groups have charged that Russia has illegally removed tens of thousands of children from Ukraine since it began fomenting unrest there in 2014 and particularly following its full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022.
In March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his children's-rights ombudswoman, Maria Lvova-Belova, for war crimes, citing what it called their "individual criminal responsibility" for the unlawful deportation and transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova, both wanted for arrest by the ICC, meet at the Kremlin on March 9, 2022.
The removal of elderly Ukrainians, both those with relatives seeking them and those without, has attracted less attention, Russian volunteers assisting them say. Even a rough estimate of the number of such cases is not possible, they told RFE/RL. In July 2023, an investigative report in Britain's The Telegraph said that "elderly and vulnerable Ukrainians were taken into Russian territory, stripped of their citizenship, forced to give blood and left in agony from botched medical procedures."
Because authorities in Russia have been prosecuting volunteers helping Ukrainians return home, the real names of Hanna, Olha, and Dasha, a woman who assisted them, are being withheld for their protection.
From A Retirement Home To 'Good People'
The home in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region where Hanna lived alone before Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022 was rendered uninhabitable during fighting that spring. While Olha lives on government-held territory in Ukraine, occupying Russian forces sent Hanna to a camp for displaced people inside Russia. From there she was soon sent to the home of her eldest son, who lives in a city in Russia's Volga region.
"Luckily, she remembered the address," Olha told RFE/RL. Otherwise, it was likely her family in Ukraine would never have been able to find her.
But Hanna's son, whose name and specific location are also being withheld for his protection, was not in a position to take her in permanently.
"My brother is not a young man, and he is in poor health," Olha explained. "There was simply no room in his one-room apartment for Mama, so he contacted a center for refugees. And they sent her to a retirement home."
"It was unbearable to know that she was in a nursing home," Olha said. She said she "very much wanted volunteers to help Mama get to the Russian border, where I would meet [her] and take her home with me."
The volunteers who later helped Hanna at Olha's request recalled Hanna crying when she talked about her time at the retirement home, saying she was used to living on her own and not under constant supervision. She wanted to go home, they said, to her daughter.
After Hanna had been sent to the retirement home and was issued a Russian "internal passport," the country's main identification document, the brother began assisting Olha's effort to secure their mother's return to Ukraine.
It took them several months to secure Hanna's release from the retirement home, and she was able to move into the apartment of some "good people" in the city where Olha's brother lives. In early December 2023, Olha contacted Russian volunteers in St. Petersburg who agreed to help Olha's brother bring Hanna to the border crossing with Estonia in the hope that Olha would be reunited with her in Narva.
'We Will Never Forget You'
Shortly after the failed attempt to leave Russia via Estonia, Hanna again found herself on a train platform, this time headed from St. Petersburg to Belgorod, where she planned to try the Kolotilovka-Pokrovka crossing. Earlier, she'd said goodbye to her son, who returned home.
In all likelihood, it was the last time they will see each other.
The volunteers escorted her to her place on the train and made sure she was comfortable. A conductor promised to look after Hanna "as if she were my own mother," a volunteer told RFE/RL.
People ride a train across the Kolotylivka-Pokrovka border crossing from Russia into Ukraine.
Other volunteers were on hand to greet her arrival in Belgorod. They put her up in a hostel and gave her a warm meal. She waited in the border city for two days while the Russian volunteers located a woman, Dasha, who was willing to escort Hanna over the border.
When all was ready, the volunteers drove the two women as close to the border crossing as it is possible to go by car. Then they waited nervously for four hours before they heard from them again.
Dasha later reported that the walk to the border crossing took an extremely long time, with Hanna moving slowly and resting frequently. Night fell early, and the pair sometimes strayed off the path in the darkness. Dasha pulled a small wagon with all their possessions.
But they made it without incident to a reception checkpoint on the Ukrainian side where they were given tea and a warm place to sit. Olha was waiting to embrace her mother for the first time since late 2021.
"My dears," she wrote in a text to the volunteers in Russia, "thank you to all of you. Mama made it. We are heading home. Will write more tomorrow."
Because they couldn't make it back to Olha's home in Kharkiv before the martial-law curfew, the two women spent one last night on the road at the home of acquaintances. By the time their journey was over, Hanna had a cold that kept her in bed for several days. But they were together again to greet the new year.
"Mama is doing fine," Olha wrote to the Russians in St. Petersburg just before the holiday. "She is recovered, and we sit together in the evening and talk about everything that has happened. No matter how sad we are and how difficult things are in Ukraine these days, we are in a holiday mood, despite everything. We just want this horror to end."
"Thank you for all the good that you are doing," she concluded. "We will never forget you."