‘My future is in the EU’: the Ukrainian children who don’t want to go home

Evelina’s foster mother speaks to the 18-year-old, who spent two years with her in Sicily. After being repatriated to Ukraine, Evelina says she begged to go back to Italy Photograph: Camilla Minnozz/Guardian

When he first arrived in his new home in a small village in the Italian Alps in March 2022, 15-year-old Denys* says he felt homesick and confused. He had been put on an overnight bus and relocated along with more than 100 other children from his orphanage in Berdiansk, in eastern Ukraine, which was one of the first areas to be invaded by Russian troops.

“Ukraine was all I knew,” says Denys. “I had never left it my whole life.”