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Ukrainian teen from occupied territory found serving in Russia’s army, says Back to Ukraine project

Source: Meduza

Oleksandr Mustiatse, a Ukrainian teenager stranded in occupied territory in the Kherson region after Russia’s full-scale invasion, is now fighting on Russia’s side, the Ukrainian initiative Back to Ukraine reported on July 28. According to the group, this is one of the first such cases to come to light.

Mustiatse appears in a database of Ukrainian children under Russian occupation, which lists his hometown as the village of Krynky in the Kherson region — captured and later destroyed after 2022. He was 14 when the full-scale invasion began. He’s now 19. Back to Ukraine located his page on VK, where he had posted photos of himself in Russian military uniform and displaying the letter Z, a symbol of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

That VK page was deactivated in November 2025, leading Back to Ukraine to speculate that Mustiatse might have been killed. The group later reported that he was alive: with help from one of his fellow soldiers, it learned that Mustiatse had been wounded in the fall of 2025, treated at the Burdenko Main Military Hospital in Moscow, and sent back to the front.

On August 3, Back to Ukraine revealed it had found another VK page belonging to Mustiatse — this one under the name Alexander Famenok — and messaged him directly. The activists told him that Ukraine had learned of his fighting on Russia’s side and asked him to explain himself. Mustiatse didn’t deny it. “I’ve always been for my own country. Russia has always been in my heart,” he replied.

“When a person born in Ukraine sincerely considers russia to be ‘their side,’ that’s not an accident, but the result of systemic work. That’s why we insist on the need to launch a full-fledged state information strategy to fight for the population of temporarily occupied territories. Every month and year of occupation leads to the mental loss of [these] people,” Back to Ukraine stated.

The Ukrainian project Myrotvorets added Mustiatse to its database on August 3 as an accomplice in Russian aggression against Ukraine.

Back to Ukraine describes its goal as documenting the militarization and Russification of Ukrainian children under Russian control. Publicly, the project exists only as Instagram and Threads accounts, both created in the second half of July, and it’s unclear who is behind it.

Mustiatse’s story, as told by Back to Ukraine, drew coverage from many Ukrainian media outlets, as well as the attention of Mykola Kuleba, Ukraine’s former presidential commissioner for children’s rights and head of the charity Save Ukraine. As far as Meduza knows, however, no one besides Back to Ukraine has tried to reach Mustiatse.

Back to Ukraine also publishes information about other Ukrainian children who remained in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine or were taken to Russia after the war began. Mustiatse isn’t the only one fighting for Russia, according to the group: 19-year-old Hryhorii Chymbur, for instance, is a member of Russian military intelligence. Other teenagers taken from Ukraine and identified by the project have been photographed displaying Russian military symbols.

Back to Ukraine also highlighted the case of Pylyp Holovnia, a teenager from occupied Mariupol adopted in 2022 by Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s presidential commissioner for children’s rights. Lvova-Belova is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of complicity in the deportation of Ukrainian children. She said on August 4 that Holovnia had enrolled at a university in Moscow to train as a prosecutor, though she had previously said the teenager was critical of Russia and didn’t want to live there.

According to the Ukrainian project Bring Kids Back, launched at the initiative of Volodymyr Zelensky, 1.6 million Ukrainian children remain under Russian control — either in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine or in Russia itself — after being taken there since 2014. Only 2,441 have been returned.