In 2023, for a long time, Ukrainian law enforcement officers were looking for a young boy Ilya Kuzel, whom they wanted to evacuate with his mother Irina to safer territories of Ukraine. However, the woman hid her son all the time.
Now Ilya has already been shown on the propaganda media resources of the occupiers, said the policeman of the White Angel crew Gennady Yudin in an interview with ICTV Facts journalist Natasha Tarchevskaya.
The boy remained in Avdeevka all the time
According to Gennady Yudin, Ilya’s family is large. The boy's older sisters live alone in the Rivne region, and the second in the city of Pokrovsk.
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— At one time, they even recorded a video message to their mother, in which they asked to give their younger brother custody to a safer territory, says the policeman.
The police came to Avdeevka three times and tried to convince Ilya’s mother to think about her son and leave.
There was no one in the house where they lived with Ilya, none of their neighbors saw them in the store or on the streets of the city anymore. It became clear that they either fled to Russian-controlled territory of the Donetsk region or died, said Gennady Yudin.
And already in the spring of 2024, a policeman said that he saw Ilya Kuzel in one of the propaganda stories from Avdeevka.
— Now he seems to be 12-13 years old… I called Ilya’s older sister from the Rivne region — and she also recognized him in those frames. The mother was neither in the plot (next to her son) nor in touch: that is, where this woman is now is not known exactly, noted Gennady Yudin.
He noted that he still cannot understand Ilya’s mother, who kept the child in the basement for two years.
Watch and read the full interview with policeman Gennady Yudin at the link.
