12-year-old boy brought back home from Russian-occupied part of Kherson region

Verkhovna Rada Human Rights Commissioner Dmytro Lubinets said this in a post on Telegram, Ukrinform reports.

The child's older sister appealed to the Ombudsman's Office with a request to help return her brother, Andrii. In the temporarily captured territory, the boy lived with his grandmother, because his mother died in the summer of 2022.

According to Lubinets, "during the occupation, they experienced all the 'advantages of the Russian world': intimidation, psychological pressure, visits by representatives of the occupation authorities. They threatened to take the boy away from his grandmother and place him in an orphanage, as he was left without a legal representative."

On January 1, the boy and his grandmother returned to the territory controlled by Ukraine.

"So the first day of the new year symbolically became the first day of a new life for this family," the human rights commissioner said.

The family was returned through the joint efforts of the Ombudsman's Office and the Ukrainian Child Rights Network.