Ukrainian teen says he nearly became ‘cannon fodder for Putin’

“I am Ukrainian. Why should I sing the Russian anthem?” Lavrov was 16 when Russian soldiers broke into his home in the southern Kherson region in March 2022, a month after the invasion began. Soldiers first took his disabled mother to a psychiatric hospital before taking him away under the pretense of “protection.” The reality was anything but protection, he says. With guns pointed at him, soldiers told him he must comply with Russian law and follow them. He was sent to a Russian-style boarding school for a month before being transferred to a military camp holding more than 1,000 Ukrainian children and teenagers aged eight to 18. Speaking Ukrainian was forbidden. Instructors told them that “Russia is the greatest country and you are Russians.” There, he was taught to operate rifles and drones. Lavrov remembers one instructor setting fire to a Ukrainian flag and warning that their country would meet the same fate. When Rostyslav Lavrov refused to sing the Russian national anthem, he says guards placed him in solitary confinement for a week. The room was narrow, its shelves line

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