A woman whose dad lost her on a train when she was just four years old has been reunitedwith her family 20 years on.
Yulia Gorina’s dad, Viktor Moiseenko, last saw his daughter in 1999 before he fell asleep on a 60 mile train journey from Minsk to Asipovichy, both in Belarus, and has begged his long lost child for forgiveness.
Yulia, now 24, ended up crossing the border from Belarus to Russia and was found by rail tracks in Ryazan, western Russia – some 550 miles from where she went missing and where she still lives today.
Yulia’s parents searched desperately for her and ended up becoming the subjects of a police investigation. As recently as 2017, they were made to take lie detector tests when the case was reopened.
However, the family were reunited after Yulia’s boyfriend, Ilya Kryukov, 31, tracked down the family online, with a DNA test proving Yulia is the daughter of Viktor and Lyudmila Moiseenko.
Yulia said: “It was proved by a DNA test, but it was clear even before, we are so much alike, as soon as we saw the photographs of each other.
“Nobody had any doubts – we are one family. I found not only my mother and father in Belarus, but also brother Dmitry and elder sister Nadezhda.”
Reflecting on their reunion, she said: “We were all in tears. We could not even talk, we only cried and hugged each other.
“My parents have told me that they were searching for me for a long time, that they believed they would find me one day.
“My mother could not stop hugging me, she made me sit on her lap as if I was a little girl. We were chatting till 3am, and then Ilya and I had to go back to Russia – my daughter was waiting for me.”
It is difficult for Yulia to reflect on the three week period between going missing on the train and being found by a Russian police officer – though she recalls travelling with a man and woman who were hiding from police.
She said: “We slept in some abandoned houses. I do not remember all this now.
“I was told I did speak with a Belarus accent, using local words for vegetables like potatoes and onions but I do not know why Russian policemen did not pay any attention to it when they were searching for my family.
“It’s a great pity that people who found me and were walking me around before I was taken into foster care didn’t report their find to police.
“I’ve no clue how I got to Ryazan, I simply can’t imagine it. I remember going on a train but all memories are vague.”
While the past two decades have been incredibly painful for the parents, they said they never gave up on Yulia.
Lyudmila said: “Twenty years is like a whole life, but we never lost hope, we believed – and so we found each other.”
Featured Image Credit: east2west news
