Ukrainian teenager who was deported to Russia and served military summons appeals to Zelensky for help

Bohdan Yermokhin, a Ukrainian 17-year-old who was deported to Russia from occupied Mariupol in 2022 and recently received a military summons, has released a video statement asking Volodymyr Zelensky for help.

“I, Bohdan Yermokhin, am currently on Russian territory and I ask you, Mr. Zelensky, to help me return home,” he says in the video, which his lawyer back in Ukraine, Kateryna Bobrovska, posted on Facebook.

Bobrovska also included her own message in the video, asking Zelensky to personally oversee Yermokhin’s return to Ukraine.

Bohdan Yermokhin lost both of his parents several years ago. Before Moscow launched its full-scale invasion, he was attending college in Mariupol, where the school’s director acted as his legal guardian. After the city was captured by Russian forces, Yermokhin was deported to Russia and put under the custody of a family in the Moscow region.

In March 2023, Yermokhin tried to flee from Russia but was stopped by security forces near the Belarus-Ukraine border. Russian Children's Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova later said that Yermokhin’s escape attempt was a “provocation” and that he had been “lured to Ukrainian territory by means of manipulations and threats.”

Earlier this month, it was reported that Yermokhin had been issued a summons to report to a Russian military enlistment office in December, when he will turn 18.