At the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, the Ukrainian government turned out to be unprepared to take care of the most vulnerable children — orphans and those left without parental care. At that time, there were about 67,000 such children in Ukraine, approximately 3,500 of them in the frontline Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. A government document on the evacuation of children from residential institutions (Ukrainian ‘internat’ — transl.) appeared only in the second month of the war, and before that, the decision to evacuate children was made by local authorities.
Children from Dnipropetrovsk Oblast were evacuated by millionaire businessman Ruslan Shostak, whose fortune in 2021 amounted to $140 million.
According to him, in February 2022, he was approached by the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration and asked to evacuate children from residential institutions. This is how the ‘Childhood Without War’ project began, within which Shostak evacuated several thousand children to Turkey. The residents of the institutions spent almost three years there, looking very happy in the promotional photos and videos on Ruslan Shostak’s Foundation’s social media pages.
Journalists received a report on the Ukrainian ombudsman’s visit to hotels in Turkey, signed by 11 officials in March 2024. It states that the children were forced to participate in Shostak’s Foundation’s promotional videos, were subjected to psychological and sexual abuse, and that two underage girls returned pregnant from hotel employees. Officials and representatives of the foundation are concealing these facts or are reluctant to comment on them.
Seven children who were in Turkey confirmed these facts to journalists. Slidstvo.Info also spoke to girls who returned from Turkey pregnant and gave birth to children in Ukraine. The police launched an investigation into the violations, but closed it a year later; the only person punished was a senior educator, who was demoted to a physical education teacher.
EVACUATION
‘We woke up, it was such a wonderful morning, then we came to class. Someone called our teacher, then she said, “Children, war has begun,”’ recalls Katia, a resident of the Horlytsia institution in Dnipro, who was a minor at the time of the invasion and lived in the institution.
The First Lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska, took charge of the urgent evacuation of orphaned children from Ukraine to Turkey. Together with the First Lady of Turkey, Emine Erdogan, they agreed to place the children in Antalya, a tourist resort on the Mediterranean coast.
‘They didn’t tell us where we were going, but we overheard the adults and found out that we were going to Turkey. We were so happy. Finally, we would get to see the sea,’ recalls Svitlana (name changed for security reasons), a resident of the Horlytsia residential institution in Dnipro.
A private foundation created by Ukrainian businessman Ruslan Shostak, who is on the list of the top 100 richest Ukrainians, undertook to transport the children. He is the founder of EVA and VARUS, two of the largest retail companies selling food and beauty and health products. Shostak is also the head of the Retail and Logistics Group in the Business Council under the President of Ukraine. According to him, he had not previously been involved in projects related to children deprived of parental care.
Ruslan Shostak during an interview with journalists from Slidstvo.Info
‘We chartered nine large Boeing aircraft that flew from Romania. More than 90 buses and 24 train carriages transported the children,’ Ruslan Shostak recalls the evacuation process during an interview with journalists from Slidstvo.Info.
On the website of the project ‘Childhood Without War,’ this evacuation of Ukrainian children is called the largest since World War II. According to Shostak, his foundation received guarantees from Turkey that the children would be returned home when the security situation improved.
FUNDRAISING
The children who were brought to Turkey in March 2022 were accommodated in hotels belonging to the Larissa Hotel chain in Antalya, where orphaned children stayed with their educators, while children from family-type care (‘DBST’ in Ukrainian — family-type children’s home — ed.) lived separately. Representatives of the foundation and Turkish staff lived in the hotel alongside the institutions’ residents.
International donors from large companies recruited by the Shostak Foundation and volunteers provided money for the accommodation of the residential institutions’ students.
‘I run a corporation with sales of $2 billion and more than 30,000 employees. So children are not a money issue for me. The whole project cost us about $10 million. This is money that we spent and money that we were able to raise from caring individuals and companies. Most of these companies are companies associated with me and my friends,’ says Ruslan Shostak.
‘At first, everything was fine,’ recalls Katia from Kryvyi Rih Gymnasium No. 98, ‘Then they started telling us that the project was closing down, that there was no money for food. At the same time, we noticed that the staff were eating one type of food, while the children were being given something else. For example, they would eat potatoes with meat, while we might be given bulgur with gizzards.’
According to the testimonies of seven children who were in Turkey as part of the evacuation project and shared their memories with Slidstvo.Info, they were repeatedly moved from one hotel to another, and their living conditions gradually deteriorated. To raise money for the project, the foundation began to involve children in fundraising. The Childhood Without War project page features many appeals for donations for the evacuated children.
The well-known Ukrainian singer Olia Poliakova became the ambassador of the project. She called on Ukrainians to donate money for orphaned children and came to Turkey with charity concerts and called on people to donate money to the project.
CHILDREN AS PR TOOLS
In March 2024, a delegation from Ukraine led by the Ombudsman’s Office arrived in Turkey on a monitoring visit. It included officials from Dnipro, central authorities of Ukraine, representatives of the Turkish Ombudsman’s Office and UNICEF.
Journalists from Slidstvo.Info received a report on this monitoring visit, signed by 11 representatives of Ukraine, and learned about systematic violations of children’s rights: psychological and physical abuse, as well as the pregnancy of two institutions’ residents.
The children said that they were forced to perform in front of adults — ‘sing songs, dance’ — and if they refused, their gadgets were taken away and their food was restricted. Katia from Kryvyi Rih recalls: ‘They said they would take away our phones and tablets. If we refused, they took them away’. Mariia, who was in Turkey as part of an evacuation project and wished to remain anonymous, said that they were constantly being filmed: ‘We said we didn’t want to. The response was: “You’re in the project, they’re paying money for you.”’
The children’s testimonies are confirmed by a report that ended up in the hands of journalists.
‘The foundation held special events, involving children in photo and video shoots. Children who participated in such campaigns were given preferences in the form of additional food, clothing, etc. Children who refused to participate were punished and restricted in their access to entertainment. For bad behaviour or unwillingness to participate in the foundation’s fundraising campaigns, children could be deprived of their tablets and, with that, access to education,’ says the report signed by representatives of the Ukrainian authorities.
During the ‘Childhood Without War’ project, children were involved in fundraising campaigns by the foundation
Ruslan Shostak denies coercion: ‘We have children… Well, I don’t know what to consider fundraising. All filming was done with the permission of the consulate and embassy.’
Expert Kyrylo Nevdokha, who himself spent 16 years in institutions and has now created the organisation ‘DiyMO’, considers such actions a violation of children’s rights: ‘Forcing a child to do something they should not do is a violation of their right to dignity,’ adding that public photos could harm future adoptions.
Shostak responds: ‘This is not about our PR… The foundation was named after me because donors are more likely to give to a reputable name.’
ABUSIVE TREATMENT
During their stay at the hotel, the children began to complain about the abusive treatment of the educators. The girls were forced to clean the rooms, and the older children were forced to look after the younger children and children with disabilities. ‘We cleaned these three hotels… They thought we had to. But we shouldn’t have to do that,‘ says Ilona from the Horlytsia institution. She adds: ‘We have to wash the children, bathe them, do their laundry… And no one cares whether you feel sick or not.’
Most of the complaints concerned Oleksandr Titov, a teacher at Kryvyi Rih Gymnasium No. 98. According to the children’s testimony, he ‘could approach a child — hit them, yell at them, or lock them in a room.’ The report states that Titov committed physical and psychological abuse and used children to pressure his colleagues: ‘… Oleksandr Titov commits physical and psychological abuse against children. Oleksandr also used children as a resource to put pressure on other educators who did not want to obey the rules he had created, through his connections with the Foundation that finances the stay of children and accompanying persons.’
Expert Kyrylo Nevdokha calls such behaviour typical for institutions: ‘Institutions need convenient children… that is, children who can be controlled. That is why violence occurs.’
Journalists spoke with Titov. He denies the accusations: ‘I gave myself to these children… This is the first time I’ve heard that children say I beat them.’ He admits only to ‘inappropriate behaviour’ but rejects the accusation of cruelty: ‘To say that I abused the children is, excuse me, too much.’ After an investigation, he was demoted to physical education teacher, but he continues to work at the facility.
Educator Alexander Titov, the accompanying adult for children from the institution in Turkey
PREGNANT MINORS
The beating of children is not the only violation recorded in the ombudsman’s report. After their temporary evacuation to Turkey, two girls returned home pregnant by Turkish men. Fifteen-year-old Nastia and 17-year-old Ilona became pregnant by employees of the hotel where the children were staying.
The ombudsman’s monitoring mission report states: ‘the foundation’s staff are in daily contact with the children and have round-the-clock unhindered access to their places of study and residence, which makes it possible to commit crimes against children and use violence against them.’
‘The Turks cooked food and did other things (at the hotel, ed.). They didn’t look in a very nice way at pretty girls. I didn’t like it,’ says Katya, a resident of the Horlytsia residential institution. ‘Once I was walking down the street… and there were two Turks. One of them approached us and started talking. We ran away because we were afraid. He could have even accosted us. We ran away.’
The men Katia is talking about worked and lived in the hotel where the children lived. According to the children, the educators saw this but did not prevent the contact.
One of the residents of the Kryvyi Rih residential school, 15-year-old Nastia, met a 23-year-old Turkish man named Mami, who worked as a chef in the hotel restaurant.
“At first, I didn’t want to meet him. Then I went to meet him, somehow unconsciously. I don’t know why I went to his room,” says Nastia.
Nastia from Kryvyi Rih was in a relationship with a local chef during her evacuation to Turkey
Mami and Nastia began dating, he would visit her in her room and take her for walks when the children were allowed outside the hotel. According to Nastia, the educators at her institution and others knew about this.
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- Photo of Nastia with Mami
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- Photo of Nastia with Mami
The children say that Mami could get into the girl’s room even when the camp was moved to another hotel in Antalya.
‘He climbed over the fence and came to her room. Sometimes the teachers saw him coming, sometimes they said nothing. Sometimes they kicked him out. Sometimes they let him in,’ says Katia, Nastia’s classmate at the facility.
At that time, 16-year-old Ilona, a resident of the Horlytsia residential institution, was also dating a 21-year-old cook from the Larissa Hotel.
‘We met, and it was very interesting. The food in Turkey is completely different, and I didn’t like it. At first, I only ate salads. And I was about to leave when Salkih brought me a loaf of bread cut in half, a sausage, a tomato, and a cucumber. Everything was wrapped in cling film. And that’s how he fed me, and then we got to know each other, and then he asked for my Instagram,’ says Ilona.
Ilona, who was evacuated to Turkey with her residential institution
Ilona’s teachers also knew that the girl was communicating with an adult man, and according to witnesses, they even helped these meetings take place.
‘Yes, she let me go and picked me up. And we went for walks, me and Salikh and Diana Serhiivna, we went for walks in another city. We ate ice cream, burgers, she took me to the beach during quiet hours, we walked there with Salikh. But all the teachers knew, they guessed, and they knew that we were communicating and that we had a serious relationship,’ Ilona says about her meetings with Salikh in Turkey.
Journalists spoke to Salikh via video link — he talked in detail about his relationship with Ilona, a Ukrainian girl, and said that they wanted to have a child.
‘It was forbidden to go near the children’s area. But I told her, ‘I want to come to you, I want to come into your room. She replied, “It’s forbidden.” I said, “No, I’ll break the rules, no problem. No one will see me.” I bypassed the restrictions and went,’ Salikh says.
Ilona became pregnant.
‘It was very unexpected. For me, it was hysterical,’ recalls Ilona. ‘I really loved him, we had plans for the future. But when he found out that I was going to Ukraine, he became very aggressive towards me. He became angry. He started grabbing my arms and throat. The teacher pulled him away.’
When 15-year-old Nastia found out she was pregnant, she tried to hide it. She knew she would be punished. When the teachers began to suspect something, she faked tests and hid her belly. Finally, according to her, the senior teacher, Oleksandr Titov, began to threaten the girl with a forced abortion.
‘They went and told Oleksandr Titov, who was our head teacher. He went to Ukraine afterwards and called me, saying: “Tell me the truth, if you are pregnant, we will sort it all out, you can take a pill so that you don’t have any issues,”’ says Nastia.
Once, the girl felt ill during another celebration, when the children were asked to read poems. Nastia lost consciousness and woke up in the nurse’s office. According to the girl, none of the adults noticed her pregnancy anyway.
‘Well, I didn’t know, I didn’t see it. I was rarely an educator, I didn’t see it. It’s not that I didn’t see it, I didn’t even think about it. — So outsiders could enter the hotel? — They lived in the hotel. They didn’t enter, they lived with us. — Could other outsiders come besides them? — They could, why, Turks. (…) Did I let them in? I didn’t let them in. And I didn’t know if they were allowed to go in or not. If I had any questions for the Turks, they said they were employees. Ninety per cent of them are men of all ages. Everyone there is 18 or older, or 17 or 16. And they are cleaners, they are in the kitchen — they are everywhere,’ Titov explains the circumstances.
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Svitlana Lebid, director of the Horlytsia residential institution where Ilona studied, does not believe that her teachers acted improperly. Instead, she blames the girl for what happened: ‘There were no instances when my teachers violated or failed to fulfil their obligations. Well, the circumstances are beyond our control. This girl came from an antisocial family. Well, how can I put it, this way of life is ingrained in every cell, in the blood of these children.’
‘My girlfriend wrote to me: “The teacher saw us”. But she said that the teacher wouldn’t tell anyone. Then another week passed. I went to her room. Again, we sat and talked. Then I left. The teacher was sitting right there, right in front of the door. There was one teacher, God bless him, who helped a little. That is, because he understood our situation, he knew. For example, when the teacher went somewhere, he took her and called me too. We met, we walked,’ says Salikh.
During an interview with Slidstvo.Info, Salikh confirmed that he had a relationship with a Ukrainian minor
‘In fact, no employee is held accountable for the violations of children’s rights that they commit. Well, “these are special children, these are children with disabilities, these are traumatised children, it’s difficult to work with them, but work with them and then we’ll see what you have to say,”’ says Kyrylo Nevdokha about the approach of educators in institutions.
When it became clear that the girls were pregnant, they were sent to Ukraine to study at a vocational technical school. Nastia left Turkey in her seventh month of pregnancy and saw a doctor for the first time when she was already in Ukraine — before that, she had not been examined as a pregnant woman in Turkey. Ilona moved into a dormitory, and the teachers and representatives of the foundation were not interested in the girls’ fate after they left Turkey (the other children continued to live on the Mediterranean coast).
Both Nastia and Ilona gave birth to their children on their own, without the support of their former teachers or Ukrainian social services.
‘We built security systems, we built four borders to protect the children. From the teachers, from the children themselves, from other children, from outsiders, because there is still a threat from the street, from some kind of sexual stories that could possibly happen on the premises. But, apparently, when there are a lot of children together, something may happen,’ says Ruslan Shostak. According to him, he did not know about the pregnancy of the residents of the institutions. The same is said by representatives of his foundation who were in Turkey.
‘I don’t know, I can’t be responsible for that,’ Shostak emphasised when asked by journalists about the pregnancy of two underage girls.
‘In fact, what happened to the girls is a consequence of the institutional system and the neglect of adults. It is a consequence of the absence of reliable and safe adults whom the girls could trust and who could explain to them the consequences of interacting with adults. And it is a consequence of their age, at which they are not yet ready and unable to make informed decisions about interacting with adults who are several years older than them,’ explains Kyrylo Nevdokha.
Kyrylo Nevdokha, who himself spent 16 years in residential institutions, now helps graduates to socialise
Seven months after the monitoring visit that revealed these violations, the project was closed. The children were returned home and placed in family-based care. Those who were 16–18 years old enrolled in vocational schools and began to live independently: either with relatives or in dormitories.
Shostak himself does not link the closure of the project to the violations that were identified. ‘This is a difficult question,’ says the businessman. ‘Well, first of all, children cannot stay in hotel conditions all the time. This is indeed an issue that needs to be solved differently. The state must get involved in this. Secondly, well, it’s my money, and the state didn’t help us with a single penny. And it didn’t plan to help.’
Nastia returned to Kryvyi Rih to her sister and father, who had been deprived of his parental rights. The girl gave birth alone: ‘Of course, when I was giving birth, I was scared, I was in pain. I didn’t understand what to do. The contractions were painful. I didn’t know what to do. I just felt like I was being twisted.’
Nastia gave birth to a girl, Melek, who is now two years old. After the birth, the child’s father lived with Nastia for several months, then began to beat her and cheat on her. Nastia ended up in the social hostel of Pastor Maksym Fetisov, who offered her to go abroad, temporarily registering the child in his name. Melyek has now been in Fetisov’s private shelter for over six months.
Maksym Fetisov
Maksym Fetisov refused to comment on the situation on record, but acknowledged that Melek is in his care. Journalists learned that a court case to terminate Nastia’s parental rights has been ongoing since August, with the last hearing taking place on 17 November. Nastia herself learned about this process from journalists at Slidstvo.Info.
After returning to Ukraine, Ilona also gave birth alone, receiving no support from the foundation or the institution she had graduated from. When her son was 2-3 months old, Ilona wanted to end her life — she tried to cut her veins. ‘I didn’t see any way out at the time — neither mentally nor physically, I didn’t see any way out of this situation. I just didn’t want to live, nothing. It was after giving birth, the baby was 2-3 months old,’ says Ilona.
Now the girl lives with her boyfriend and his mother and is raising her 1.5-year-old son Nikita.
PUNISHMENT
Based on the results of the monitoring visit, criminal proceedings were initiated for improper performance of duties to protect the life and health of children. The girls say that the educators asked them to sign documents stating that all relationships with the Turkish men were consensual. Nastya recalls: ‘I signed it and wrote “This was with my consent”.’
The criminal case was closed due to lack of evidence. Oleksandr Titov was demoted to physical education teacher, and the teachers at the Horlytsia institution were not punished. Director Lybid explains: ‘Tell me, how can I punish a person who had little rest during the day… the children were sick and needed help.’
For the evacuation project, Ruslan Shostak received a high state award — the ‘Order of Merit III degree.’ The decree was signed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. His wife, Olena Zelenska, did not comment on the project. Project ambassador Olia Poliakova said in a response to the press service that during her participation, ‘all activities were transparent… no such facts were recorded.’
Officials in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, the former and current ombudsmen of Turkey, the Ministry of Family and Social Services, the Red Crescent, and the Turkish Embassy in Ukraine did not respond to any of the numerous requests from journalists. Ruslan Shostak stated that he does not consider himself or the foundation to be responsible for what happened to the Ukrainian children evacuated to Turkey.
