Vladyslav Rudenko was only 16 years old when three balaclava-wearing Russian soldiers armed with machine guns forced themselves into his home in southern Ukraine and snatched him away.
It was October 2022, and Russian forces had been occupying the city of Kherson since early March - one week into Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
Vladyslav was given 30 minutes to pack up his belongings before he was forcefully enrolled into a military camp that aimed to strip him of his Ukrainian identity and mould him into an obedient Russian soldier.
For the next nine months, the teenager was barred from contacting his family, subjected to sadistic physical abuse, and forced into a Russian uniform as part of Moscow's systematic attempt to indoctrinate Ukrainian minors.
Speaking in the wake of his trauma, told the Daily Mail: 'On one day, Russia took everything away from me and my life was never the same again.'
