Re: Teen Fkk Russia
Phyllis Sterlin
Before he was allowed to leave Russia, lawyer Bobrovska described an urgent need for Yermokhin to return to Ukraine before his 18th birthday, when he would become eligible for conscription into the Russian army. The teenager had received two official notices to attend a military enlistment office in Russia, although officials later said he had only been summoned for record-keeping purposes.
A Ukrainian teenager who was allegedly lured into Belarus by the Russian security services is being held in Russia on suspicion of terrorism-related crimes, according to a copy of an official Russian document seen by RFE/RL.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on September 8 protested Hryb's detention and demanded that Moscow grant consular access to Hryb "and explain in detail all of the reasons for his detention."
The statement condemns what it calls Russia's "persecution of Ukrainian citizens in Russia and elsewhere, groundless detentions of Ukrainians, violation of their rights to have fair trials, and their convictions on fabricated and politically motivated charges."
Kyiv and Moscow have been locked in a standoff over Russia's seizure of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014 and Moscow's backing of armed separatists in a war that has killed more than 10,000 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014.
In March, the European Parliament called on Russia to free more than 30 Ukrainian citizens it said were in prison or other conditions of restricted freedom in Russia, Crimea, and parts of eastern Ukraine that are controlled by the Russia-backed separatists.
Carl Schreck is an award-winning investigative journalist who serves as RFE/RL's enterprise editor. He has covered Russia and the former Soviet Union for more than 20 years, including a decade in Moscow. He has led investigations into corruption, cronyism, and disinformation campaigns in Russia and Central Asia, as well as on poisoning attacks against Kremlin opponents and assassinations of Iranian exiles in the West. Schreck joined RFE/RL in 2014.
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One of the goals of the foundation is to help teens secure jobs and plan their futures. It recently partnered with Gilead to launch a career guidance program that allows the teens to work with counselors, take career assessment tests and identify what jobs they want to pursue. Psychologist Guzel Zamkovaya, who was brought on as a counselor to lead the project, explains the big disadvantages the teens face when trying to find work.
"She is a very gifted girl. She is all ballet, all inspiration," Galtseva said. "When children are talented, regardless of their nationality, they are alike in some way in how they approach what they do."
The Bolshoi took notice of Harper during a summer program it held in Connecticut and offered her a place in the Moscow academy. She knew her teachers would be tough and that it would be a challenge to be so far away from home, but it has been even harder than she expected.
"It's been very difficult, but with that comes strength and with that I improve," Harper said. "I feel like I came here to get better, to improve, not only technically but emotionally so when I dance people see something."
Harper, though, says she feels accepted by her classmates. Her teacher concurs, noting that just that morning some of the other girls had brought her a skirt to wear over her leotard because they were expecting a visit to the class by foreign journalists.
In her Moscow neighborhood, the women in her favorite grocery store have taken a shine to the delicate American teen, helping her pick out fresh fruit and keeping her favorite almond butter stocked. And in the local Starbucks they have learned to spell her unusual name on her cup.
A total of 17 Americans study at the Bolshoi academy, outnumbered among the foreign students only by the 28 from Japan, with the rest coming from 22 other countries. Some of the foreign students took part in the spring concert on Thursday evening, and Harper was among the few girls from her class chosen for two of the dances.
"Preparing for a performance, it's all you think about. It kind of overtakes your mind," she said. "Preparing for exams, I'm always very nervous. There's a lot of stress. But with that stress, you know, comes happiness and you feel overjoyed when you're dancing, you forget about everything, you forget about the sacrifices you make, you forget about the pain, or the tears. Dancing is what makes me happy, no matter how much you have to sacrifice."
Harper's mother, Layne Baumann, made two trips to Moscow after she and her husband, Tim Ortlieb, dropped off their only child in September. In February, Baumann decided to move to Moscow at least for the rest of the school year, and she now rents an apartment two blocks from the academy, which has allowed Harper to move out of the dormitory.
At the end of each day, Baumann talks to her daughter about what she learned in class and logs onto Skype so Harper's father can join the conversation from their home in Mount Hood, Oregon, 11 time zones away.
In addition to her dance classes, Harper has Russian language lessons every day at the academy. For her other subjects, she does online classes in the evenings and on weekends. On Sundays, her only day off, she and her mother often explore their new city. They also have already seen more performances at the Bolshoi Theater than most Russians see in a lifetime.
Harper started ballet at a local dance school when she was 3 years old. When she turned 11, she was accepted to the School of Oregon Ballet Theatre in Portland, a three-hour roundtrip journey that she and her mother made six days a week.
"Being 3 in ballet class, it's fun and games," Harper said, smiling at the recollection. "My teacher was wonderful, it was so much fun. And then once I got more professional I realized how much you have to sacrifice, and how difficult it is."
In this photo taken Tuesday, March 1, 2016, Harper Ortlieb, from Mount Hood, Oregon, leaves the Bolshoi Ballet Academy after attending in Moscow, Russia. Harper Ortlieb, a 15-year-old American, left her small town in Oregon to move to Moscow to follow her dream of becoming a prima ballerina. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
In this photo taken on Tuesday, March 1, 2016, Harper Ortlieb, from Mount Hood, Oregon, reads emails on her way home from the Bolshoi Ballet Academy in Moscow, Russia. Harper Ortlieb, a 15-year-old American, left her small town in Oregon to move to Moscow to follow her dream of becoming a prima ballerina. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
An orphaned Ukrainian teenager, who was taken to Russia from occupied regions of the war-torn country, has returned home ahead of his 18th birthday after mediation from the UN and Qatar, avoiding potential conscription in the Russian army.
It was February 24, 2022, and Chub, then 16, was asleep in her bed. There had been rumors that Russia would invade, but like many Ukrainians, Chub had not taken them too seriously. At first she thought the roaring sound outside her bedroom window was fireworks, but soon realized the war had actually begun. Chub hid under the covers and covered her ears while thinking, No, this is not happening. I am sleeping.
Kharkiv is a city in eastern Ukraine, a region that shares a border with Russia, and was one of the first places to see heavy fighting on its streets. According to the United Nations International Organization for Migration, more than seven million Ukrainians were internally displaced by the end of May of that year, and people from the Kharkiv region alone made up 27% of that number.
As their parents went to emergency meetings for work and collected money from nearby ATMs, Chub and her then 13-year-old brother stayed home, boiling potatoes and eggs to eat in case their electricity was shut off. While Chub cooked and gathered candles in the apartment, she received a message: Her physics teacher had sent her class an exam to take.
Chub distracted herself by studying English, reading books, and attempting to do schoolwork virtually, but the situation in Kharkiv got worse as the war continued. She barely spoke during that time, and was depressed by how the war was unfolding all around her. Attacks on Kharkiv were constant at the time, but sleep was an escape for the 16-year-old, who says she was not stirred by the sounds of explosions raging outside.
As part of Ukraine Global Scholars, a nonprofit that connects Ukrainian teens with scholarships to international boarding schools and colleges, Chub is hoping to be accepted to a college in the US. She has applied to 20 schools and is still waiting to hear where she got in. After she has chosen a college, Chub will leave behind her entire childhood in Ukraine, balancing the pain and trauma of having lived in a war-torn country with the rush of campus life.
According to an August 2023 report by UNICEF, there were 6.7 million children from age three to 18 in Ukraine; in March 2022, the war led to the displacement of 4.3 million children. Children in Ukraine have experienced widespread learning loss. Internet outages are common, and classes are disrupted by air-raid sirens that force entire schools to evacuate to bomb shelters to wait out attacks.
Only one-third of Ukrainians in grade school were learning fully in-person, the report stated. In completely remote learning areas, students attended Zoom classes for a fourth year, after COVID-19 had already stolen almost two years of their full educational experience.
Ukraine Global Scholars (UGS) offers hope for the 250 high school students it supports with over $62 million in combined scholarships to top global boarding schools and colleges. In return for the opportunity to live abroad and receive a Western education, UGS students commit to returning to Ukraine after their studies and using their degrees to rebuild the country.
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