Vlad Buriak was 16 years old when he tried to evacuate from Melitopol, a town in the Zaporizhzhia region, which Russian forces occupied in the first weeks of Moscow’s full-out war it embarked on four years ago.
On 8 April 2022, the car he was in was stopped by Russian troops in Vasylivka, at the last checkpoint before Ukraine’s controlled territory. As the Moscow troops checked the car's passengers, Vlad, seated in the back, was holding the phone.
