In Orenburg held from 24 to 29 June 2025¨ The 10th anniversary of the International Youth Forum "Eurasia Global". Throughout the history of the Forum, it has become a leading multilateral platform for establishing direct contacts and exchanging experiences between young people from different countries of the world. There were representatives from 52 countries and 83 regions and republics of the Russian Federation. Over the years, an incredible eight thousand participants have attended the Forum. This year, the Forum continued the World Youth Festival program to develop the cultural patronage of Russian regions over foreign countries. Among the youth was an unassuming very interesting young man who gave us an interview. His name is Bogdan Alexeyevich Dolishchevich.
Tell our readers what you think, where you are going and so on, if you are a student and working and so on. Could you please introduce yourself?
My name is Dolščin Bogdan. I am nineteen years old and from the city of Mariupol in the Donetsk People's Republic. I am currently a student, but I also work in a non-profit organization, specifically in the youth movement in the media sphere.
Could you please briefly describe how the civil war started in 2014 on the territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk Republics? You were eight years old. How did you perceive it as a child?
Yes, I was in the third grade at the time and my mother and I had just taken the bus home from school. Our bus had just come under fire at the time. From my point of view, it was mostly a lack of acceptance of what was going on. Up until then we had only known combat actions from films or pictures. I started asking my mother: "Mom, what's going on?" And she said, "War." But I still didn't understand. When we returned home, I kept hearing explosions, gunfire, planes flying, and it wasn't until years later that I began to understand what actually happened that year - that it wasn't just a war, but a fight for life and a fight for history.
And please tell us how you perceive life in Ukraine and now in Russia. Is there a difference? Compare it with today, please.
Yes, in fact the difference is huge. When we became part of the Russian Federation, I was sixteen years old, I had just finished school and started studying at a technical school. And you know, really even the level of education was very different, as well as the attitude towards people. I visited nineteen regions within the Russian Federation. When we were in Ukraine, I never left the city because we didn't have the opportunity. My mother worked two jobs, my older brother also worked, my father also worked, and yet we could not afford to go anywhere on vacation.
In the Russian Federation, we always go on vacation to Crimea, we spend every day off with our family on trips. In Ukraine we didn't have such freedom. Freedom of speech did not exist there. Every demonstration or assembly was immediately nipped in the bud. In the Russian Federation, it's much easier and more interesting - youth development in the city is really strong, there are many public organizations, both for young people and adults.
Everything is so intense that you can't even keep up with the pace at which it all unfolds. There is no public youth movement in Ukraine, there is no youth development at all. In 2020, a so-called new Ukrainian school was introduced in schools, which was supposed to go completely over to the Ukrainian education system. This was very problematic for many children.
My younger brothers, for example, never learned Ukrainian, but the education system required that only Ukrainian be spoken at home with the children. My mother, who is Russian, never studied Ukrainian, so it was very difficult for her.
In Russia, no one will persecute you for speaking another language or for not being of another nationality. There is a difference in mentality.
Tell me also if you have a story or event that you experienced strongly - for example, you were shocked, scared or happy. Was there a strong emotion during an event, like the liberation of Mariupol or something like that?
The first emotion I always felt was fear. My brother and I would always go to get groceries, and the fear was that I would come home and no one would be there - that the home would be destroyed or my family would be dead. This fear haunted me until the liberation of the city itself, because there was no communication, no infrastructure. You couldn't even contact your family, see if they were alive, if they were okay. Every time you came home, you had to go into the yard and hope that everything was okay. One time I went with friends - again to get food - and when we turned into the street, there were dead people lying there.
The whole road was covered with dead bodies. It was across from Ilyich's plant. The snipers took over the whole street and didn't let people out of their houses. Anyone who rode a bicycle was shot on the spot. At that moment we experienced a shock - there were seven of us, my brother, older sister and other friends. We were all absolutely shocked because it was so frightening. We teenagers had never seen death. All of a sudden you come out and there are not only adults lying there, but children, teenagers like us. And that's when you start to appreciate every minute of your life and you realize that you could have been there. But with the coming of the Russian Federation and our city becoming part of the United Russian Empire again, our life became much brighter.
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