© Interior Ministry
Vasily at age 6, now 16 years later.
A boy long-thought dead was found in southern Russia, after escaping the Romani settlement which he was kidnapped in when he was a six-year-old back in 2000. The man has no formal education. His biological parents are dead, and his future remains uncertain.
In late July, a policeman found an apparently homeless man illegally sleeping in someone else's parked van in the city of Volgograd. When the man, possessing a sheaf of blonde hair, was taken to the station and asked to provide ID, he said he had no documents, and that he was a gypsy by the name of Dmitry Mikhay.
"Are you sure? Have you seen yourself in the mirror? Your complexion is way too light," said the on-duty policeman, according to daily Russian tabloid
Komsomolskaya Pravda, whose journalist interviewed the officers dealing with the case. The detainee immediately confessed that it wasn't his real name, and that he remembers only that he was called Vasily, when he was snatched by gypsies on his way home from an outdoor market where his mother was a trader.
Police began to scan missing persons records. As well as a name, officers had another distinctive detail to work with - a large birthmark on Vasily's chest.
Comment: And this isn't helping to tackle the problem: Institutional child sex abuse inquiry loses third head and it hasn't even started yet