The stories told to 15-year-old Alina - the daughter of Svetlana Popova - while she lived under Russian occupation in the Kherson region were meant to intimidate her.. The pro-Russian mother of the girl's best friend Evgenia entangled her in a web of lies. The woman insisted that Alina and her family receive food aid from the administration imposed by Russia. And when the Ukrainian troops entered Kherson, she convinced that the Ukrainian soldiers would punish everyone who had contact with the Russians..

Alina Popova told The Guardian that she considered Evgenia her friend. When the woman offered to flee to Russia for safety, the frightened girl agreed.

The reality turned out to be much darker. Evgeniya saw Alina's care as a way to get money and the best apartment from social services in Russia.. Crossing the border, she became violent, ”the newspaper writes..

Thousands of children have been abducted and taken to Russia since Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine last February. Alina is one of several hundred lucky people who managed to return home after her mother, with the help of volunteers, made a terrible and difficult journey to Russia to defend her case before the country's social services..

According to the Ukrainian government, 16,226 children were deported to Russia, of which 10,513 were found and just over 300 returned home.. Some fear the number of missing persons may be underestimated. Unaccompanied children (some of whose parents died during the siege of Mariupol) disappeared in a Kremlin-sanctioned system now under investigation by the International Criminal Court.

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The experience of the Popov family and others who spoke to The Guardian sheds light on yet another aspect of the transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia: how friends and even relatives took them for selfish motives..

“This woman lied to Alina. She told her: “For the fact that you communicated with Russian soldiers during the occupation and took food and water, after liberation, Ukrainian soldiers will torture and kill you.. We need to run because we are in danger,” said the girl’s mother Svetlana Popova.

“I told Alina that it was all a lie, but she believed, stole her birth certificate and left with her in October last year, a few weeks before the liberation of Kherson,” she added..

Having found her daughter through social networks, Svetlana Popova found out that Alina was taken to a village 1.5 thousand kilometers deep into Russia. When the mother contacted her child via Viber, Alina cried. Evgenia found out about the contact and then took the phone from the kidnapped girl.

" Evgenia was so friendly when I was in Ukraine, but she deceived me. When she found out that I was talking to my mother, she got angry and hit me. She was obsessed with money and what she could get from the government for courting me, ”said Alina.

To return her daughter, Svetlana had only one option: to go to Russia through Poland and Belarus to contact the social services of a hostile country.. Having reached the region where her child was taken, she made an official statement that Alina was her daughter.. The Ukrainian woman learned that the woman who stole Alina sent the girl to a “rehabilitation center” to hide her while the adoption process continued.

" They were furious that she took Alina to the territory of Russia. But they also said that if I had come four days later, the woman would have given Alina a Russian ID.. Then she would be Russian, and they would not be able to do anything, ”said Svetlana.

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Alina and Svetlana managed to reunite. But they belong to a tiny minority of torn families whose children were able to return to Ukraine.. Most relatives of abducted children are reluctant to talk about it, fearing that it could complicate efforts to return them.. In one particularly high-profile case, a group of kidnapped children from Mariupol were shown at a rally in Moscow in February.

“We don’t know exactly how many children were abducted,” said former children’s ombudsman Mykola Kuleba, who now leads the Save Ukraine rescue network that helps parents like Svetlana.

“These are not only unaccompanied children who are sent to camps in Russia, and children who are abducted from boarding schools or orphanages.. We don't know exactly how many. In some cases, we are talking about children who ended up in the occupied territories, while their families remained in the territory controlled by Ukraine, and these families lost contact with their children.. Now they're afraid they'll never be seen again. We should also talk about the children who are now in Russia, about whom we know nothing.. Children whose parents were imprisoned after they were separated in filtration camps, or whose parents died, in particular during the siege of Mariupol. We are most concerned about those children missing for six months or more, for whom the Russian authorities prepared birth certificates and passports and sent them to foster families,” Kuleba said..

As with Alina, Kuleba said he had heard of other Ukrainian children taken away for financial gain..

“One boy we rescued from a Russian school said he was with another boy from Mariupol who was given to a very poor family of alcoholics.. He was ignored and he went hungry every day. In my opinion, this indicates that they took him for money for alcohol, ”he said..

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Despite successes in the repatriation of Ukrainian children, Kuleba noticed “changes for the worse” in relation to the Russian authorities.

“They understand that each of these cases is a war crime, and increasingly they are trying to block the return. They make the process more and more difficult.. And time is working against these kids. Some of them come from very vulnerable backgrounds and we understand that they are easy to influence, especially after six months. We had a case with a boy who, after two weeks in a foster home, did not want to return.. He was convinced that the Ukrainians would hurt him,” Kuleba said..