Prosecutor’s Office: The SBU is investigating data on the suicide of a Ukrainian teenager who was taken to Russia

Law enforcement officers opened proceedings based on information about the suicide of a teenager from the Kherson region in Russia, the Prosecutor General’s Office announced on December 24.

The agency refers to the data that appeared in the media today regarding the pet of a family-type home in the village of Tokarivka, who was illegally taken to Russia.

“In connection with this, criminal proceedings have been initiated for the commission of a war crime that caused the death of a person (Part 2 of Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine). The pre-trial investigation will be carried out by the Main Investigative Department of the Security Service of Ukraine under the procedural guidance of the Prosecutor General’s Office,” the prosecutor’s office reports.

The Russian publication “Important Histories” reported on December 24 that in January 2024, Oleksandr Yakushchenko, a teenager taken from the Kherson region to Russia, committed suicide in a foster family in the Krasnodar region.

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Before the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Yakushchenko lived in a family-type orphanage in the village of Tokarivka near Kherson, managed by Lidia Sharvarly. After the occupation of the village of Sharvarly, according to the publication, she began to cooperate with the Russian authorities, and when the ZSU liberated Kherson, she and her children went to the Krasnodar Territory of the Russian Federation. In the end, Sharvarla refused custody of the children.

Oleksandr Yakushchenko joined the family of Natalia and Oleksandr Lukashenko from the village of Akhtanizivsk. Yakushchenko was 18 years and seven months old at the time of his death. The cause of death, the newspaper reports, was suicide: the teenager hanged himself a few kilometers from the house.

As the journalists learned, Oleksandr Yakushchenko’s sister is under the care of another foster family in the Temryuk district of the Krasnodar Territory. Her guardian refused to speak to reporters. Oleksandr and Khrystyna Yakushchenko are officially considered missing in Ukraine. According to the publication, the rest of the children deported by Sharvarla also remain in Russia.