‘I wanted to live’: A Ukrainian orphan’s journey through Russian occupation

Kyiv, Ukraine – When the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine began, Denys Kostev was 18 and living in an orphanage in Kherson. Appalled by the war, he used to film social media videos decrying the invading Russian forces. But he was soon forcibly transferred to occupied Crimea, and his rhetoric suddenly went in the other direction. Now in Kyiv four years later, Kostev told Al Jazeera he played the role of a poster child for wartime Russia just to survive. Sprightly, eloquent and photogenic, he used to attend a theatre club at his orphanage in the southern Ukrainian city, where he lived after his mother’s incarceration and death.