Yulia reunited with her father Viktor and mother Lyudmila. Photo / Belarus Police
Yulia reunited with her father Viktor and mother Lyudmila. Photo / Belarus Police
A young girl who was lost by her father on a train 20 years ago has finally been found, reuniting with her birth parents.
Yulia Gorina, 24, mysteriously vanished in 1999 from a train travelling between Minsk and Asipovichy, Belarus, as her dad slept.
But the four-year-old at the timeended up more than 885km away, unknowingly venturing into Russia where she was found by officials three weeks later.
Police tried to find her parents, but after no success, they put her up for adoption.
More than 20 years after her disappearance, she managed to track down her real family thanks to the help of her boyfriend Ilya Kryukov, who helped locate them with a simple internet search.
For years Yulia's parents, who are now in their 50s, searched for their missing girl. But in 2017 they were under suspicion of killing her, remaining as suspects until they were asked to take a lie detector test.
While it is unclear how Yulia got from Asipovichy to Ryazan, the 24-year-old says she has a memory of a couple potentially snatching her.
She still lives in Ryazan, the place where she was found after the lengthy 885km journey.
A notice about Yulia's disappearance in 1999. Photo / Belarus Police
A DNA test has now proved that she is the daughter of Viktor and Lyudmila Moiseenko - and her father has "begged her forgiveness" for losing her after coming face-to-face for the first time in 20 years.
Her real mother Lyudmila said: "Twenty years is like a whole life, but we never lost hope, we believed — and so we found each other."
After finding and hugging her real parents, Yulia said it only felt real once she saw her mum in the flesh.
"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 (Nadya).
"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."
