The Ukrainian initiative Back to Ukraine, which studies the militarization and Russification of Ukrainian children, has located a teenager who had been considered missing. Alexander Mustyatsa, born in 2007 and a resident of the village of Krynky in the Kherson region, turned out to be in the Russian armed forces.
Mustyatsa was 14 at the start of the full-scale war and is now 19. He had been entered into the 'Children of War' registry as missing. Activists found his page on VKontakte with photos of him in Russian military uniform, with the letter Z, and at combat positions.
The page had not been updated since November 2025, leading Back to Ukraine to suggest that Mustyatsa may have been killed. Later, activists learned that in the autumn he had been wounded, treated at the Burdenko hospital in Moscow, and returned to the front.
Back to Ukraine then discovered a second page for Mustyatsa, which he ran under the name Alexander Famenok. In correspondence with activists, he did not deny fighting for Russia. 'I've always been for my country. Russia has always been in my heart,' he replied.
Mykola Kuleba, head of the charity Save Ukraine and former Ukrainian presidential commissioner for children's rights, called this the first known case of a missing Ukrainian teenager fighting on Russia's side. 'For many, this may look like a story of personal choice. But in reality, it shows what happens to Ukrainian children who remain under Russian occupation for years,' he wrote.
Back to Ukraine stated that Mustyatsa's case is the result of systematic work and insisted on the need for a state information strategy to compete for the population of occupied territories. The initiative's backers remain unknown.
Mustyatsa has been added to the database of the Ukrainian project Myrotvorets as an accomplice to Russian aggression against Ukraine.