A Ukrainian teenager forcibly removed from an orphanage in Ukraine’s partially occupied Kherson region and taken to Russia committed suicide while in the care of a foster family earlier this year, independent news outlet IStories has reported.
Oleksandr Yakushchenko, who died aged 18, sent a voice message to friends shortly before his death in January, saying that “nobody gives a shit” about him in his new family and he would hang himself so as “not to ruin their lives”, according to IStories.
The picture of Yakushchenko’s grave published by IStories shows that he had died on 10 January 2024.
Yakushchenko, who was taken from an orphanage in a area of the partially occupied Kherson region of southern Ukraine that has since been liberated, also told friends that he wanted to go home to his mother, Olena, whose children had been removed from her care in 2016 due to her problems with alcohol. Mother and son had remained in touch by phone ever since.
The father of the foster family in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region, Alexander Lukashenko, told IStories Yakushchenko had hanged himself a few kilometres away from home. Lukashenko said he did not know why he had taken his life, and that he refused to take responsibility for the death as Yakushchenko was an adult.
Prior to the war, Yakushchenko lived in a family-type orphanage in a village near the city of Kherson. Its director, Lidia Sharvarly, cooperated with the pro-Russian authorities and was subsequently appointed head of several villages. With the money she received to pay for her wards’ resettlement, she bought a house in the same Krasnodar region where Yakushchenko died, IStories said.