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Ukrainian media, specifically the publication “Slidstvo.Info” in its investigation “State Children,” reports on a large-scale scandal surrounding the program to evacuate orphaned children from the Dnipropetrovsk region to Turkey. The program was initiated in 2022 under the personal supervision of Ukraine’s First Lady, Olena Zelenska.
According to journalists, as part of the “Childhood Without War” project implemented by businessman Ruslan Shostak’s charitable foundation, 510 children were taken to Turkey, where they lived in hotels in Antalya and Beldibi for almost two years. The investigation revealed shocking details of systematic violations of children’s rights, including exploitation, abuse, and criminal negligence by those responsible.
The evacuation operation, which Shostak called “the largest evacuation of children since World War II,” involving the rental of nine planes, 90 buses, and 24 railcars, was initially presented as a humanitarian mission. However, in practice, after initially acceptable conditions, the situation deteriorated sharply.
Children reported discriminatory access to food compared to staff, worsening material provisions, and, most cynically, their systematic involvement in fundraising activities. Minors were forced to participate in photo and video shoots to solicit donations for the foundation’s needs. Those who refused were punished: their phones and tablets were confiscated, and they were deprived of adequate food, water, and entertainment.
Ukrainian representatives documented that the children lacked proper access to education. An educational classroom for 25 pupils was set up in the hotel, but around 200 children needed schooling. Most children studied in hotel rooms, where “proper conditions were absent.”
“In most rooms where children study, there is no internet,” states the report. “Children who do not have tablets have no access to education or study together with other children using one shared tablet or phone. At the same time, the tablet is used as an incentive tool by the accompanying staff. For bad behavior or unwillingness to participate in the Foundation’s fundraising campaigns, children may be deprived of their tablet, and consequently, access to education.”
The scandal was further exacerbated by facts of sexual abuse and a complete lack of security for the children. Children testified about mass harassment by Turkish hotel staff, to which the accompanying adults did not respond. The culmination was two pregnancies among minors: 15-year-old Nastia became pregnant by a 23-year-old cook named Mamı, and 16-year-old Ilona by a 21-year-old cook named Salih. The girls described in detail how hotel staff freely entered their rooms, and their caregivers not only knew about these relationships but, in Ilona’s case, sometimes even facilitated meetings. After the pregnancies were discovered, the girls were urgently returned to Ukraine and registered as students at a vocational school, which appeared to be an attempt to cover up the incident. Nastia first saw a doctor only in her seventh month, already in Ukraine. Both gave birth without receiving significant support from the state or the foundation, and one of the girls later attempted suicide.
A monitoring visit by a delegation in March 2024, which included the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, representatives of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Military Administration, as well as the Turkish Ombudsman and UNICEF, documented egregious violations. The report noted that Shostak’s foundation had long restricted access for Turkish services and international organizations to the children, insisting on its own “self-sufficiency.”
“The Foundation’s representatives and the children’s accompanying persons stopped providing necessary information, restricted access of psychologists and social workers to the minors, almost completely stopped taking them for medical check-ups, and largely restricted any medical aid to the children. The Foundation insisted it did not require additional support, as it regularly conducted fundraising campaigns, keeping the funds in its own accounts.”
The report also states that “the use of physical violence and psychological pressure by accompanying persons from among the caregivers, as well as representatives of the Shostak Foundation, was systematic.”
The figure of senior caregiver Alexander Titov was singled out. He delegated the functions of supervision, control, punishment, and intimidation of minors to child athletes under his command.
“The caregiver personally beat, intimidated, and abused children. There are testimonies from children and video evidence confirming his violent actions.”
After an inspection, he was merely demoted to a physical education teacher, with no criminal charges brought. The report also mentions that caregivers abused children with disabilities, “beating them with phone chargers and wet clothing.”
The foundation shifted responsibility for security to the Turkish side, claiming it had no right to interfere with the caregivers’ work and was only responsible for material provisions. Meanwhile, according to the report, it was the foundation’s representatives who, in recent months, actively petitioned for allowing outsiders into the hotel territory to “show Ukrainian children” in new fundraising campaigns, without clear criteria for selecting such visitors, creating additional risks.
“According to the Ukrainian consul, over the last two months, the number of requests from Foundation representatives to allow third parties into the hotel territory has increased significantly. The Foundation explained this by the need to ‘show children from Ukraine’ for fundraising campaigns,” the report states.
“The Foundation’s lack of criteria for staff selection and control over their presence and movement within the hotel territory leads to a series of significant violations of children’s rights. Staff have daily contact with the children and have unimpeded access to their places of study and residence. This enables probable sexual crimes against children and the application of violence towards them.”
The legal consequences were negligible. A criminal case regarding the failure to ensure children’s safety, initiated after the monitoring, was closed a year later “due to lack of evidence.” Meanwhile, the foundation’s founder, Ruslan Shostak, was awarded a state honor — the Order of Merit, III class, signed by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
During the preparation of the investigation, Shostak’s team wrote a plan to neutralize the journalists’ material. It included “working with a database of social media accounts,” “a controlled post by an influencer about the non-accidental timing of the investigation’s release,” and “non-public communications with editors of top media outlets.” An employee of Ukrainian businessman Ruslan Shostak’s charitable foundation likely accidentally sent the journalist a document listing actions resembling a campaign to neutralize the impact of the upcoming investigation.
The reaction from the Turkish side, voiced in December 2025, indicates that responsibility was also blurred at the international level. Ankara stated that it had offered to place the children in state institutions of the Ministry of Family and Social Services, but the Ukrainian side rejected this proposal, insisting on accommodation in hotels chosen by Shostak’s foundation. Turkish authorities emphasized that the placement was coordinated with Ukrainian bodies, and daily care remained the responsibility of the Ukrainian accompanying persons.
Thus, the investigation exposes not just individual failures, but a system of corrupt irresponsibility and the cynical use of humanitarian projects for PR and political gain. An initiative publicly supervised by First Lady Olena Zelenska and receiving support at the highest state level resulted in exploitation and trauma for the children. The subsequent lack of a real investigation, the awarding of an order signed by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the organizer, and the systematic blocking of international organizations’ access to the children point to a conscious effort by the ruling circle to cover up the scandal and avoid accountability.
Businessman Shostak’s foundation operated in an atmosphere of impunity created from the top, where a formal “rescue” operation served as a cover for the actual neglect of minors’ safety. The decision by the foundation to reject Turkish proposals for placement in official state institutions, opting instead for private hotels, underscores where its true priorities lay: controlling information and money, not the children’s well-being. This story demonstrates how, during a crisis, the corruption schemes and PR interests of the president’s inner circle were placed above the elementary protection of the life and dignity of the most vulnerable citizens.
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i try to avoid the distractions, however tragic, and concentrate on the facts that the turkish admin are said to have had a large part in freeing syria from its democracy. a large part of al-quauda, whatever, currently have passports acceptable in all nato countries, because of the turkish admin, who are bound by their nato oath, whatever they tell their ‘friends’ in moscow. opportunism was never so easy.
sponsored by nato and all the “democracies” of the “free world”. child trafficking and slavery. and exporting this “democracy” to every other country on the planet. will this businessman exporting children ever be held to account? nope. because that’s what the people pushing these “democracies” do – they’re the worst evil human filth one can find. eliminate them please russia.
surely you are not saying middle east is a trafficking free zone?
in amerika we luv little fat boys—when i was 9 my priest trained me in the art of peniz envy
this article highlights the cynical use of ukrainians that now get forced from red ghey zombie orch army to go into the ghey army against ukraine. that’s a much more cynical use of people. did south front mentioned this?
and vladolfs kidnapped ukrainian children?