Veronika's journey: how Russia used fake rape allegations to stop one Ukrainian teenager going home
Veronika Vlasova was taken to Russia by her aunt to escape heavy fighting in their village. When the Russians learned her mum had been in the Ukrainian army they proved reluctant to let her go home.
By Svyatoslav Khomenko and Nina Nazarova.
On the evening of 6 March 2023, 13-year-old Veronika Vlasova, from Kharkhiv region was sitting in a refugee centre in Russia’s Lipetsk region, waiting for her grandmother to come to take her back home to Ukraine. Veronika had become separated from her mother and grandmother when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and she hadn’t seen either of them for a year.
As the hours ticked by there was still no sign of her grandmother. Then suddenly at 23:30, three police officers burst into the room. They told Veronika they were investigating a rape allegation, and that she was officially considered to be the victim. They said she would need to make a statement. “Just confirm what we’re saying to you, and we’ll leave you alone,” they told her.
Veronika realised her grandmother would not be coming that day, and that she would not be going home.
When Veronika was finally reunited with her grandmother two months later, photographs of their reunion were triumphantly posted on social media by Russia’s Children's Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova. ”Joyful news!” she wrote. “Another family has been reunited.”
What she didn’t say was that in order to get to this point, a now 14-year old Veronika had endured a year and a half of bullying at school, interrogations in a criminal case, a compulsory gynaecological examination and incarceration in a children’s rehab centre, and her mother had testified to the UN Security Council about her daughter’s case.
BBC is blocked in Russia. We’ve attached the story in Russian as a pdf file for readers there.
A day like any other
For Veronika Vlasova and her mother Nina, the 23 February 2022 was just another ordinary day. As they left their home in Pylna, a village on the Russian-Ukrainian border in Kharkiv region, they had no idea it would be two years before they would return.
Nina, a former servicewoman in the Ukrainian army, was on her way to Kharkiv where she’d built a successful business running a chain of kebab outlets. Veronika was going to spend the night with her aunt, Tatyana Melnik, and her cousins in the nearby village of Borisovka.
At 4:21 the following morning - Veronika says she remembers the time to the minute - everyone woke up with a start to the sounds of shelling. The family spent the rest of the week sheltering in basements as fighting raged around them. Veronika called her mother to tell her what was happening, but the road from Kharkiv to the border was closed and Nina was unable to come to get her daughter.
On March 2, after a week under almost constant shelling Tatyana and her husband decided they had had enough and it was time to try to get the family to safety. The only option was to gather up their belongings, jump in the car and drive across the border into Russia. They took Veronika with them.
Veronika and Nina tried to keep in touch by phone, but with military jammers operating in the area, phone signals were very unstable.
"Mama only found out we were going to Russia when we passed through customs,“ Veronika says. "She was very scared."
The Melnik family spent the night in a sports hall in Belgorod, a week in a transit centre and eventually on 12 March they and 200 other displaced people were transported by bus to a temporary accommodation centre in the ‘Mechta’ (Dream) children’s sanatorium in Lipetsk region.
“Wherever they sent us, that's where we went," Veronika recalls. A few days after their arrival she celebrated her 13th birthday.
“She is a war criminal in Russia”
In Russia, Tatyana Melnik was immediately granted temporary guardianship over Veronika - by law, a minor must have a legal representative. Veronika kept in touch with her mother via brief phone calls.
Nina, tried to reassure her daughter that everything would be okay, but that despite everything that had happened, she needed to stay calm and be polite to her hosts.
"My daughter is a very patriotic child, and despite her age, she understood very well that people with weapons came to her house, threatened her, and shouted, 'We are liberating you,'" she explains to the BBC.
Russia’s Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova says that since February 2022, 730,000 children from Ukraine have entered Russia. Most travelled with their parents, and others - from children’s homes, or on state-sponsored holidays were evacuated in large groups. But there’s also a third category - individual cаses of children, like Veronika, who for whatever reason got separated from their parents and ended up stranded in Russia. Tracking such cases is much more challenging but these individual stories vividly illustrate the challenges faced by Ukrainian child refugees in Russia and how difficult it is for them to return home.
Reuniting Ukrainian children who have been taken to Russia with their families is a difficult process. The Russian authorities insist that mothers personally come to Russia to retrieve their children (men of draft age from Ukraine are not allowed to leave during the war, so it is usually women who make the journey). Crossing the Ukrainian-Russian border directly is currently impossible and families need to make a long detour via third countries. Ukrainian charities often help provide the money for the journey.
For Nina Vlasova travelling to Russia herself was not an option, because she had previously served in the Ukrainian army.
“She would be seen as a war criminal in Russia,” Tatyana told the BBC.
She and her sister discussed possible ways for Veronika to come home. Nina suggested paying for Tatyana and her family to make the long journey home, but Tatyana was reluctant and said it wouldn’t be possible to send money from Ukraine to Russia. Another option was for Tatyana to bring Veronika to the Latvian or Estonian border and hand her over to a relative in the neutral zone. But at the last moment Tatyana changed her mind saying she was afraid the Russian authorities wouldn’t let her back in and she would end up cut off from her family.
What an increasingly frustrated Nina did not know, was that her military past was already known to the Russian authorities and that they were using it to put pressure on Tatyana and her family.
Tatyana says she assumed that someone in their village must have told the occupying Russian forces that her sister had been in the army. Both families’ homes were searched by Russian soldiers, and the Melniks were even asked about their relationship with Nina when they crossed into Russia.
Tatyana says it became clear very quickly that the Russian intelligence services did not want her to take Veronika back to Ukraine, because they wanted to try to force Nina to come to Russia herself to pick up her daughter.
"They told me to sit still like a mouse," she told the BBC. "I hardly communicated with my sister. I could have told her that it was the intelligence services, but I couldn't say that they were pressurising me, I was too scared.”
As a result the relationship between the two sisters became increasingly tense.
“She accused me of wanting to keep the money she thought I was getting by acting as Veronika’s temporary guardian,” Tatyana says. “I didn't deny it, I just couldn’t say anything."
"There is no love lost in our family now," she adds.
Nina meanwhile was furious with her sister who she felt was not willing to help because she didn’t want to jeopardise her comfortable new life in Russia.
“My sister started telling me that the Armed Forces of Ukraine attacked themselves - she began to talk all sorts of nonsense. But I didn't want to start a row with her because my child was with her.”
For Tatyana life in Lipetsk initially seemed to be working out quite well. As she told the BBC, she spoke Russian, her children had found new friends, and her husband had found work.
But Tatyana herself struggled to find a job. As a nurse, she would need to re-register her Ukrainian qualifications in order to work in Russia.
"They offered her a job as a hotel administrator. But you needed to speak English, and she didn't," says Veronika.
Increasingly, Veronika says, Tatyana began to take out her frustrations on her niece, blaming her and her “Ukrainian army mother” for the fact she couldn't find a decent job.
The months passed, spring turned to summer. Veronika remembers walks by the river, and games of volleyball in the sports hall. The food in the sanatorium canteen was regular if not particularly tasty. Lessons were organised for the refugee children, although no-one seemed to care whether they attended classes.
"Whoever wanted - studied, whoever didn’t, just sat around,” says Veronika. “It didn't matter to anyone whether we studied or not - because we were Ukrainian refugees.”
News from back home came largely via Russian state-controlled television channels. They painted a picture of hungry people living in basements, being forced to eat dogs, and risking being shot if they spoke Russian. Veronika felt scared, and wondered if she wasn’t actually better off staying in Russia. But when she phoned her grandmother to ask about life in Kharkiv she got a very different picture.
“We have humanitarian aid everywhere,” her grandmother reassured her. “We didn't have to eat dogs, and we’re not shooting at each other.”
Veronika spoke to her mother very occasionally. "We told each other that everything is fine. That was the main thing we could say. I just needed to hear her voice," Veronika remembers.
“Go back to Ukraine, you’ve got nothing here”
On 15 September 2022, Tatyana, her family, and Veronika, were moved to another temporary accommodation centre - near to Lipetsk airport. Conditions were good and the family were given two rooms. They were well-fed in the canteen, with occasional tea gatherings that included fruits and cakes, as Veronika recalls. Refugees received donated items, and certificates were provided for shopping in stores to get clothing, shoes, and cosmetics.
However, there was no river, no gym, and no friends. Veronika wasn't allowed to go outside the territory of the centre by herself, and her aunt wouldn't permit her to travel into the city. A school bus came to pick the children up every day, and it brought them back home in the evening.
Veronika had to change schools as well. From September onward, she attended a secondary school in the village of Kuzminskie Otverzhki.
The school's website details the events of the 2022-2023 academic year, including mandatory Monday flag-raising ceremonies with the Russian national anthem and weekly "Talks about Important Things” a new addition to the curriculum since the start of the war, and aimed at engendering a sense of patriotism in Russian school children. Veronika remembers that these "talks" included discussions about the annexed region of Crimea, pushing the idea that it had been returned to Russia “by the will of the people”.
At some point, Veronika says the students - and especially the girls, were instructed to write letters introducing themselves and sending good wishes to Russian soldiers at the front. "I approached the class teacher and said I don't want to write such things. She said, 'Why did you come to Russia then? Why are you here if you don't accept our politics?'"
Out of the 35 children in her class, Veronika was the only one from Ukraine and no-one seemed keen to make her feel welcome. She tried to make friends, but it didn't work out - partly because her classmates already had established friendship groups, and partly because "the kids treated [me] as if they were disgusted to communicate with me because I am from Ukraine”, she says. “If I tried to make friends with someone, and they would look at me with a face that clearly said: 'stay away from me.'"
In the class chat group, and to her face the other children bullied her, calling her by derogatory names, plaguing her with questions about Ukrainian rocket systems, trying to take her belongings as “trophies”.
Veronika's aunt, knew what was happening but did not try to intervene, and even now, in conversations with the BBC, clearly wants to play it down. "Veronika studied well, and she was held up as an example because she was from Ukraine, excelling in all subjects, and because of this, the other children expressed their opinions about her."
The main thing, Tatyana told the BBC, was that Veronika was not being physically harmed.
A trusted friend
Veronika's only friend during this period was Kirill Prozennikov, a 20-year-old refugee from Kharkiv region and her neighbour in the Mechta sanatorium
"There was a big group there, but then everyone scattered, and we remained and started to be friends," she says. "In the sanatorium they used to organise performances for children, fairy stories. We used to take part - he would play the grandfather, and I played the grandmother. When my mom saw a photo of us she asked who it was. And I told her, and later she met him [over the phone]. My mom knew who he was, and she trusted him."
After Veronika and her aunt's family moved to the new centre near the airport, Kirill continued to visit her regularly.
Both Veronika's mum and aunt say they were aware of the friendship between 13-year-old Veronika and 20-year-old Kirill and did not see anything inappropriate in it.
"In the place where they were supposedly safe, under the protection of the Russian authorities, boys were bothering the girls, and this Kirill started to protect her," says Nina. "Kirill is more like an older brother to her. She tried to tell me as much as possible about what they talked about. And Kirill really liked her a lot."
Tatyana agrees: "He didn't bother her, no. He brought sweets, fruits, toys for her. He had affection for her, and she liked him. Since we are refugees, children in school constantly bullied her, so we tried to stick together, you know?" she says. "He's a good boy, of course. A bit scatterbrained, but good."
In the meantime Nina was making arrangements for Veronika to come home. It was agreed that her grandmother would travel to Russia with the necessary notarised power of attorney and bring her home. Kirill would accompany them, with Nina providing the money for all three of them to make the return journey to Ukraine.
The process of obtaining a passport and documents took several months. The grandmother travelled to Russia in early March 2023. She wanted to return with her granddaughter to Kyiv for Veronika's birthday so that she could celebrate it with her mother.
On the morning of Monday, 6 March, Veronika remembers that her aunt unexpectedly ordered her and her cousin to skip school and stay at home. At 11am two men entered the room, identifying themselves as FSB officers, they announced that they had a court order to seize everyone’s phones
"One was recording passwords from our phones. And the other, a big man, two metres tall, stood at the door and watched to make sure we didn't leave," Veronika says.
By this time, Veronika's grandmother had just arrived in Lipetsk and was shocked to hear about the FSB visit. She decided to stick to the plan and began processing the Russian version of the power of attorney, promising to arrive at her granddaughter's place in the evening.
However, at 11:30 at night, as Veronika was waiting for her grandmother to arrive, three policemen turned up.
“They told me that Kirill had given a statement admitting that we had had sexual intercourse, and he had been raping me. From 22 November, four times a day, every day,” Veronika said.
"They showed me that statement later. He told me that he had been beaten, and he wrote it with trembling hands, however he could. But the handwriting was too good for Kirill," she says. "They started questioning me, asking if anything happened between us or not. I told them that nothing happened. They said there's even a video. I asked them to show me that video. They ignored my request and showed me nothing. They talked about that statement, about November 22, but on November 22, I was at the doctor's. They didn't even choose the right date. We met with him two or three times a month. And we met with him when my aunt was present," Veronika recalls.
Tatyana corroborates this: "There was nothing and could not have been anything there. We were in temporary accommodation, there were cameras everywhere, and when the boy came, she was always in my sight," she told the BBC.
At this point Veronika says that the police began to morally pressure her: "Where is your mum? Why didn't she watch over you?" Then threats came into play: "Say that everything happened so that they won't torture you, and then they will leave you alone." Then they said, "Now we'll go for a medical examination, and it will show that everything happened." I said, "Yes, let's go, I agree to the medical examination, let's go." I insisted on this examination myself to show that nothing happened.”
Veronika struggles to tell us what happened next, but with her mother’s permission, she is determined to tell her story. She hardly slept that night, she says, and she was not allowed to wash before the medical examination.
"When they brought me, the doctor said to me, 'You understand that I will now see if anything happened?’ He brought me into the room and told me to undress completely. It was a man. He examined me. There was also a woman there; she also examined me but not for long, then she left. When the man examined me, I cried. I was very ashamed. And then he said that nothing (sexual) had happened. It was confirmed in the medical examination. No one apologized to me."
Kirill Prostennikov was arrested on the same day, 6 March, right in front of Veronika's grandmother. He had been helping her to find her way around the city.
Both Veronika and her aunt Tatyana, independently told the BBC that Kirill was beaten, given electric shocks and forced to sign a confession incriminating himself.
The court placed Prostennikov in pre-trial detention in Lipetsk on charges under Article 135 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation — "Debauchery."
The BBC does not have access to the case materials, but Tatyana told the BBC the basis for the charges were Telegram messages between the two which police had found on Veronika’s phone. “There was some kind of joke about 'intimacy for a chocolate bar' or something like that," she said, adding that investigators had shown her printed excerpts from the Telegram chat.
Veronika herself confirmed in a conversation with the BBC that some "jokes" on topics related to sex might have appeared in their months-long correspondence with Kirill, but she could not quote anything exactly because she couldn’t remember.
Veronika’s grandmother was told that her granddaughter was now officially classified as a victim in a criminal case, and that on that basis she was not allowed to leave Russia. Both Tatyana her aunt, and Kirill’s mother have told the BBC they think the whole case was fabricated in order to stop Veronika leaving Russia.
Veronika says she was repeatedly interrogated. Sometimes, she was even taken out of school for questioning. There were times when she spent hours waiting in the corridor of the Investigative Committee.
No-one at any stage made any attempt to contact Veronika’s mother.
"The Russian authorities knew that she has a mother because there was an official visit by her grandmother with all the documents,” Nina says. “My daughter constantly told the investigator: call my mum, but during all this time, while the investigation was ongoing, no-one reached out to me."
As all this was happening, Veronika turned 14. She spent her second birthday in Russia undergoing a psychological examination. "I was talking to psychologists, psychiatrists, taking tests. I remember it was in a psychiatric hospital. I spent my birthday there, and then we went to the Investigative Committee for yet another interrogation.”
The children’s rehabilitation centre
After the police visit and the initiation of a criminal case, the mood in the sanatorium soured and Veronika found friends and neighbours turning against her. "I had a friend there, and she also started calling me a prostitute," she says.
Suffering from severe stress, she spent most of her free time alone in her room and lost a lot of weight.
Her relationship with her aunt also soured. Veronika's confiscated phones were never returned to her, and she could only contact her mom through her cousin's mobile phone. "My aunt insisted that we communicate only via video calls, and she sat nearby, listening in on everything," she recalls.
There were frequent rows between the two.
In the spring of 2023, the documents granting Tatyana temporary custody of Veronika expired. Tatyana later told Veronika that the FSB had made it clear to her that she would not be allowed to extend her custody over Veronika. “They wanted me to be sent to an orphanage, so that my mum would get scared and come to Russia. And then they could arrest her,” Veronika says.
By that stage tensions in the family had reached boiling point. Veronika told the authorities she didn’t want to live with her aunt any more, and in mid-April, the social services transferred her to a rehabilitation centre for minors in the nearby town of Yelets. There, in accordance with the rules for new arrivals, Veronika was placed in two-week quarantine.
Back home in Ukraine, Nina had no idea what was happening until she got a call from Veronika, using someone else’s phone. “She said: 'Mum, I thought they were taking me to the woods to kill me. I didn't know they would bring me here.' I said, 'Okay, hold on there, we'll get you out.'"
It was only after this, that Nina finally got a call from the children's rehabilitation center: "For the first time in all this time, a lawyer called me with the question: are you going to take your child back or not? I told the lawyer about my mother's visit, that I don't understand why they didn't give the child back. I sent the powers of attorney that my mother used, there was already an official translation made on the territory of the Russian Federation. The lawyer was very surprised that it became such a problem – to take the child back."
“My daughter is being held hostage by Russia”
After Veronika's grandmother returned to Kharkiv without her granddaughter, both she and Nina began appealing to various authorities in Ukraine for help.
"The very next day, I wrote a statement to the [Ukrainian] police saying they had refused to return my child. I started asking volunteers – what should I do? I cried a lot. I knew that international publicity is needed. And so they began to contact the Red Cross and Dmitry Lubinets, the ombudsman for human rights in Ukraine. His secretary, may she have good health, I don't know how she took my statement – I was crying," recalls the grandmother in a conversation with the BBC.
"I went knocking on all doors. Not randomly, of course, I found the right people who agreed to help me," says Nina.
This is how Nina learned about the existence of the so-called "stork team" – an informal association of employees from various Ukrainian agencies who work together to bring Ukrainian children out of Russia.
"They are called storks because of the Disney cartoon," says Nina, and almost for the first time in the entire conversation, she smiles. This team includes people from the Ministry of Reintegration, the Red Cross, the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights, and other agencies.
"I was lucky," says Nina.
On 28 April, the UN Security Council held an informal meeting on the issue of the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia. Nina was invited to speak via a video link. Sitting in the office of the Ukrainian ombudsman Dmitry Lubinets, Nina told Veronika's story. It proved to be the turning point.
"My daughter Veronika is being held hostage by the Russian Federation. I cannot see her and be with her, probably at the most difficult time in her life... The world community must stop the abuse of a 14-year-old girl today. If the UN cannot do this, then who can?" Nina said, trying to hold back her tears.
For Veronika and her mother, the timing of all this was fortuitous. Just a month earlier the International Criminal Court had put the issue of deported Ukrainian children on the international agenda, when it issued an arrest warrant for both President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s children’s rights ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova on charges of the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children.
Nina’s speech to the UN was widely reported in the Russian state-controlled media invariably followed by a comment from Maria Lvova-Belova, pledging that "Russia is ready to work through every case of separation of children from Ukraine with families if such situations are identified".
Lvova-Belova claimed on her Telegram channel, that she has already become aware of Veronika's case before her mother spoke to the UN. "On April 26, an employee of the Commissioner for the Rights of the Child in the Lipetsk region met with the girl,” she wrote. “Already on May 3, our advisor contacted Veronika's mother, and we began to coordinate the details of her return home."
Tea with the Children’s Commissioner
Veronika spent just under a month living in the children’s rehabilitation centre, and she says that it turned out to be the best place she had been in during her whole time in Russia.
"Other children were forbidden to give me a phone to call my mum, but they helped me,” she says. “They ran into the isolation room, somehow slipped through the guards. It was like one big family there. Children from troubled families are just like that. They are not politicized."
In May, Veronika’s grandmother traveled to Russia again. This time, at the instigation of Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk, she was accompanied by representatives of the International Red Cross.
Veronika says attitudes towards her changed after her mother’s UN speech. “The branch director initially said that I couldn't have a phone and such, but then, when my mum spoke at the UN, they allowed me to have a phone, and everything became good."
On entering Russia, Veronika's grandmother says she was held for 10 hours. They questioned her about her daughter's military past and checked the contents of her phone.
At some point, she says her patience snapped: "I told them: Did I commit a crime in Russia? Do you have any claims against me? On what grounds are you holding me here? I'm here for my granddaughter, and we agreed on this at an international level! If you don't want to give my granddaughter back, fine, I'm turning around and going home! Give me back my passport!" In half an hour, FSB officers took her for the final interrogation, during which they casually told her that she was a "lousy mother, and her children are lousy—Nazis and fascists." "I said: You know what, guys? You ‘liberated’ me in such a way that now I have neither a home nor a family. And now I’ve came for my granddaughter. They told me: Take your passport and go!"
Maria Lvova-Belova was clearly too keen to take the credit for reuniting Veronika with the family, and she made sure a TV crew was on hand to record every moment.
"We met her grandmother in Moscow, helped with a hotel, transfer to the Lipetsk region, and translated all the necessary documents," Lvova-Belova, wrote on social media.
Journalists from one of the Russian state channels arrived in Yelets with Veronika's grandmother. "They asked if I wanted to live with my mum and where, in Ukraine or Russia? I answered those questions very cunningly, as you might say. I answered that I want to live with my mom, it doesn't matter where, but I want to live with her. There were no more questions for me because I wasn’t stating support for anyone in this situation. If I support Russia, I will be bad. If I support Ukraine, I will also be bad. So, by answering like that, I remained good. They couldn't cut anything out of what I said, and I later searched the internet—they never posted it," recalls Veronika.
Before they left Russia, Veronika and her grandmother were invited to the Public Chamber for tea with Maria Lvova-Belova. At the end of the meeting, the commissioner gave the girl an iPhone.
Her Ukrainian phones were never returned to her.
Catching up for lost time
Veronika is now living with her mum in Kyiv. She is back at school and is catching up on everything she missed while she was in Russia.
She and Nina made the journey back to their home village and to the school where Veronika studied before the start of the war. It has been completely destroyed by the Russians.
Nina continues to communicate with the "stork team" and in September 2023, Vеronika went with a group of Ukrainian children, to The Hague to testify about what they had experienced.
"She probably still hasn't fully realized what she had to go through," her mother says.
The iPhone given to her by Maria Lvova-Belova proved not to be such a great gift. After Veronika realised it was impossible to download Ukrainian songs on it, she and her mother went to a local shopping centre and part-exchanged it for a new model.
Tatyana, Veronika’s aunt left Russia soon after she was taken to the rehab centre. She told the BBC that she and her family hadn’t wanted to leave, but the Russian special services began threatening them with espionage charges if they stayed. She claims she was interrogated for six hours when she left Russia.
As of November 2023, Kirill Prozennikov remains the only participant in the story who is still in Russia, in the Lipetsk pre-trial detention center. His mother believes that her son is essentially being held hostage there. Like both Tatyana and Veronika she says that charges against him are entirely false. The lawyer appointed for him by the court told the family that he had no plans to do anything and didn't even provide them with his phone number. Another lawyer they found in Lipetsk demanded 150,000 rubles upfront, which the family couldn't afford. Kirill’s mother is now back in Ukraine and continues for fight for his release from there.
Reflecting on her experience Veronika says she learned one big lesson about Russia: “Everyone there is on their own.” she says “If someone gets in trouble, it’s their fault and it’s their problem to sort it out.”
* Veronika’s aunt’s last name has been changed at her request.
Illustrations by Angelina Korba. Pictures used by Getty Images, Maria Lvova-Belova’s telegram channel, Kuzminsky Otverzhki school site, and Google Maps.
Edited by Jenny Norton.
Read this story in Russian here.
