The Guardian ·
‘My future is in the EU’: the Ukrainian children who don’t want to go home
Thousands of children in state care were evacuated when Russia invaded. Kyiv wants them back – but many resist
When he first arrived in his new home in a small village in the Italian Alps in March 2022, 15-year-old Denys* says he felt homesick and confused. He had been put on an overnight bus and relocated along with more than 100 other children from his orphanage in Berdiansk, in eastern Ukraine, which was one of the first areas to be invaded by Russian troops.
“Ukraine was all I knew,” says Denys. “I had never left it my whole life.”
But after he began going to school, making friends and integrating into Italian life, Denys says he no longer wanted to go back home. “I started to realise there was a different way of life I could be living,” he says. “One that didn’t involve airstrikes and poverty, and that could give me better opportunities for my future.”
