Russian military personnel removed a Ukrainian citizen from the town of Borodianka to Belarus in 2022. He died in September 2025 at a social care centre in the village of Kholmech, Rechytsa District, at the age of 86, Radio Svaboda reported.
During the Russian occupation of Borodianka in the Bucha District, the man and other local residents were held in a local church, which at the time was subordinated to the Moscow Patriarchate. In March or April 2022, he was forcibly taken out of Ukraine to Belarus.
In May 2022, the man was brought to Kholmech and placed in the local territorial social service centre. He lived there in a round-the-clock care unit for elderly and disabled people. He died on September 9, 2025, aged 86. He was buried at the local cemetery.
A court in Ukraine has officially declared the man deceased.
This is the third known case of the death of Ukrainians forcibly taken to Belarus by Russians.
In 2023, the body of 15-year-old Arina Yutsyuk was returned to Ukraine. In March 2022, her family evacuated from Kyiv and came under Russian shelling. Arina’s parents were killed, and she was taken to Belarus with severe injuries. Relatives searched for her for more than a year. It later emerged that her body had been in a Mazyr morgue the entire time.
In January 2024, it became known that a 96-year-old resident of Borodianka had died. She was taken to Vetka in March 2022, where she died in June of the same year from heart failure.
