Last month, Natalija Demiš fled the horrors of war in besieged Marijupolje. And while she is now relatively safe in the Dnieper, she is still not at peace, because she is not with her 21-year-old son Juri.
As "NBC News" writes, Demish (40) says that Yuri was forcibly deported to Russia, and that he worries that he will be forced to fight against his country.
Kiev, according to NBC, has previously accused Russia of not only attacking Ukraine from the air and on the ground, but also forcibly deporting a large number of civilians from the country.
If true, the allegations could constitute a war crime under international law, NBC added.
Demiš said that she spent 34 days hiding with her husband, two children and parents in a basement in Marijupolje. After they went out to make drinking water from the snow, they got an opportunity and fled to Zaporozhye.
But she was cut off from Yuri, who lived with her ex-husband in a settlement heavily damaged by shelling - no phone or internet connection. So Demish left without him, believing she had no other choice if she wanted to survive and no way to reach her son.
Later that day, she finally heard from Yuri.
He said he and his father walked to the town of Novoazovsk, some thirty kilometers to the east, after their building was shot at.
"The Russian troops told them they had to go there if they wanted to stay alive," says Demish.
Novoazovsk has been under the control of Russian-backed separatists who have been fighting Ukrainian forces in the east of the country since 2014, NBC News explains.
After that, Demiš did not have any communication with her son, who is a student of mechanical engineering, for days.
Then on April 4, Yuri sent her a message saying, "Today we are going to Russia by force."
When she finally got her son on the phone that same day, he managed to inform her that they had been put on the train and that they had been told that they would be taken to Russia, and that they had not been told what their final destination would be.
Demish told her son to run and jump off the train.
"But he said - mom, all the windows are closed. That's not an option".
Natalija says that not knowing where her son is "kills" her.
After not talking to each other for more than a week, Yuri finally called his mother on April 15 to tell her that after a three-day train ride, they had reached the village of Semyonovka in Russia's Nizhegorod region - more than 1.000 kilometers northeast of Mariupol.
He told her that he and the others were housed in wooden houses surrounded by a forest, and that Russian volunteers were helping them by giving them food and medicine. He added that his phone was controlled and that he was questioned about his family in Ukraine, as well as his friends in the Ukrainian army.
"They are allowed to move around the region, but not outside it, because they are treated as refugees," explained Demish.
Her son has travel documents with him, and Demish said she was desperate for any way to get him out of Russia - potentially through neighboring countries like Georgia or Turkey.
Natalia's last contact with her son was on Monday, when he told her on the phone that he was fine, but that they had been shown propaganda videos stating that Ukraine as a nation is an "artificial concept" - something that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been promoting for years and which was used as one of the pretexts for Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February.
"They told them that Ukraine never existed as a country and that it was part of Russia," Demish said. "When he objected and said that history is not being rewritten, they interrogated him for two hours".
They also questioned him as to why he wrote to his mother that he had been forcibly taken to Russia.
"They never asked him if he wanted to go to Ukraine, and he was told that if he tried to do that, he would be drafted into the army in Ukraine and he would become cannon fodder," Demish explained.
NBC News adds that it could not independently verify what happened to Natalia Demish's son in Russia.
Last month, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said reports of Ukrainian citizens being forcibly taken from Mariupol to Russia were not true, adding that the Russian military was helping civilians leave the city.
Earlier, Michael Carpenter, the US ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said that the fact-finding mission had found evidence of the forced deportation of Ukrainian civilians to Russia.
The Ukrainian embassy in Podgorica announced today that, according to various sources, more than 121.000 children have already been forcibly deported to the Russian Federation.
NBC News reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry about the forced deportations to Russia from Ukraine, but did not receive a response.
As much as Natalija Demiš grieves for the suffering her son was in, she says she is aware that he could have died if he had stayed in Marijupolje.
"There is no heating, electricity or water in the city. All the shops have been looted. It is impossible to survive there. I think people were ready to go anywhere just to be warm and not to be hungry," Demish explained.
According to NBC News, her biggest concern is that her son might be forced to fight against his country.
"I am worried that they will take our Ukrainians, put them in Russian uniforms, put them on a bus and return them to Ukraine. I am afraid that they will be brainwashed and that they will be forced to take up arms," said Demish.
However, her hope does not die - she believes that Yuri will soon be taken out of Russia and that she will see him again, as well as that everyone will one day be able to return to Marijupolj.
"I really want to go back," she said with sadness in her voice. "But only after Marijupol is liberated. I don't want to live under the Russian flag".
Bonus video:
