Illia’s Story: Taken at Nine, Rescued by a Grandmother Who Refused to Give Up

Before the war, Illia had a normal life. School. Friends. A mother. A home in Mariupol he loved. He was nine years old and the world made sense.

Then a rocket hit his house.

Illia and his family ran to a neighbor’s for shelter. A second explosion tore through the building. Shrapnel ripped into his small body in multiple places. His mother was struck in the head. A neighbor checked for a pulse. There was none. She was buried in the neighbor’s yard, behind the house that had once held ordinary life.

“The mental pain was so much worse than the physical wounds.” Illia

Taken to Donetsk

Russian soldiers arrived and announced an evacuation. Illia was taken to a hospital in occupied Donetsk, separated from everything he knew. Doctors removed shrapnel from his body without anesthesia. Between procedures, the staff started on his identity.

They taught him to write in Russian. A doctor told him he could no longer say “Glory to Ukraine”: he had to pledge allegiance to Russia. They tried to replace who he was with who they wanted him to be.

“They tried to reprogram me. But I wasn’t so easily fooled.”

A Grandmother’s Fight

Hundreds of miles away, Illia’s grandmother lost contact with her daughter on March 2nd. She didn’t know if her grandson was dead or alive. Then her son in Austria found a video on Russian state media showing Illia: alone, injured, in a Donetsk hospital. That’s how she learned her daughter was gone and her grandson was trapped.

She could have broken down. Instead, she fought. Every door. Every contact. Every bureaucratic channel she could find. She refused to accept that the boy would remain in the hands of the people who killed his mother.

On April 22nd, her determination paid off. Illia came home to Ukraine.

Rescue Is Just the Beginning

Doctors in Ukraine removed four more shrapnel fragments. Eleven pieces remain in his body. He’d temporarily lost the ability to walk. His memory was fragmented. Loud noises and air raid sirens triggered fear. He had lost his school, his home, his mother, and pieces of his childhood.

Slowly, with care and support from his grandmother and Ukrainian medical teams, Illia began to heal. Today, he wants to become a combat medic. He wants to save lives on the frontlines, like the people he calls heroes.

19,000 Families Are Fighting the Same Fight

Illia’s grandmother is not unique. Right now, thousands of Ukrainian grandmothers, mothers, aunts, and fathers are searching for children they haven’t seen since 2022. Most of them don’t have rescue organizations to help. Most of them don’t know if their child is in Moscow or Siberia or North Korea.

Save Ukraine, funded by We Are All Ukrainians, gives families like Illia’s the tools and support to bring children home. 1,026 rescues and counting. Each one costs $3,383.

Every child who comes home starts with someone who refused to give up.

Be part of the next rescue at WeAreAllUkrainiansUSA.org