I told myself I would not return without my brother

As Putin is welcomed back into the diplomatic fold by President Trump despite war raging on, the Express reveals one Ukrainian woman's courageous fight to rescue her brother from behind enemy lines

- By Zak Garner-Purkis

WITH each parroted lie about Russia's war in Ukraine, Ksenia Koldin could feel her 11-year-old brother slipping away. "I don't want to return," he repeated over and over. "In Russia, I'm happy. I have friends fighting against the Ukrainian Nazis. No one needed me in Ukraine and the Nazis will kill me.

Ksenia's heart was pounding. How had a two-week trip to a children's summer camp led to the boy renouncing his identity and rejecting the last remaining member of his immediate family?

The pair of orphaned siblings were living in Vovchansk when Vladimir Putin launched his vicious invasion in 2022. They'd clung to each other beneath floorboards during the relentless bombardment, knowing there was little to be done if a rocket hit their building.

Once Russia had established a stranglehold on the Ukrainian city, Ksenia and her brother learnt there was another type of violence for innocent children like them to face: the destruction of identity.

"If you live in an occupied territory, you have no right to choose: you are Russian," the 19-year-old recalls. "You have no right to refuse them. If you did, there are not very good consequences; it could cost you your life."

The effort to scrub the Ukrainian from the children began with her brother.

Ksenia had a bad feeling from the moment that he was invited to a summer camp in Russia by an older 16-year-old friend the boy admired.

But her doubts about the trip mattered little. She was a 15-year-old whose status as a Ukrainian citizen had been ripped from her after the Russian invasion. "My voice was not important," she adds.

The teenager was right to have concerns because it soon became clear that those who spirited the 11-year-old away had no plans to return the boy to his sister.

"The summer camp was meant to be two or three weeks - but it was after five that my brother was sent to a Russian foster family," says Ksenia.