UKRAINE, KUPIANSK, May 15 — Local government identified a 12-year-old boy in Kupiansk, whose parents had been hiding him from evacuation for years, said Andrii Besedin, the head of Kupiansk military administration, to Gwara Media.

After the Ukrainian military deoccupied Kupiansk in 2022, local authorities were keeping records of locals, including children who remained in the community. According to Besedin, the services had received no information about this boy.

“The child was not attending school and was not registered with any educational institutions in the Kupiansk community,” said Besedin.

Besedin said that the parents had not even submitted documents for the boy’s enrollment in the first grade.

He also said that medical professionals will need to assess the boy’s emotional and physical condition.

Besedin said that information about the boy’s possible presence in Kupiansk appeared in early 2026 because of his grandmother. Then, juvenile police were involved in the search, and the child was officially reported missing.

On May 14, the Ukrainian military evacuated the boy with his mother.

Law enforcement might assess the parents’ actions from a legal perspective, considering the mandatory evacuation order for families with children.

Gwara’s journalists learned that an administrative report had been filed against the child’s mother, while his father died in 2022. 

At present, ten more children from the Kupiansk community remain missing. “The children are missing along with their parents. So I hope they are not in Kupiansk, but that possibility does exist,” Besedin said.

On Mar. 2, the law that allows a forced evacuation of children from the areas threatened by Russia’s war without parents’ consent came into effect.

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