More than one billion individuals live with a disability worldwide. Some nations treat disabled children like “freaks,” prevent them from attending school, let them die in squalid institutions, and even physically abuse some of them.

Rustam is one of these kids whose original parents abandoned him when he was a baby due to a number of ailments that changed the way he looked.

And the small man experienced a great miracle right before he was set to move into a “house of the disabled”…

There was no mechanism in place protecting those with impairments before to 2006. That year saw the United Nations enact an international convention that provided much-needed protection for disabled individuals and children who, in some cases, were tragically abandoned, assaulted, or imprisoned.

Rustam was one of the babies who was abandoned at the hospital due to his appearance as soon as he was born.

The cute young kid had “several malformations” at birth, which altered his face and caused him to be partially hip- and leg-deficient. He was nourished via a tube for the first two years of his life, and during the following two, medical professionals “literally piece-by-piece by collected his face.”

However, no one was interested in adopting or caring for the Russian-born Rustam, who required multiple treatments in order to maintain his health.

Then, in 2017, four-year-old Rustam’s picture was found by the good-hearted Nika Zlobin, who was hoping to foster or adopt a child.

When the woman from Moscow saw his image, she remembers that there was a hole in place of a face.

Following her and her husband Yuri’s expression of interest in the child, Rustam was given a list of requirements, including speech therapy, plastic surgery, and a prosthetic leg.
Translated into English, the woman stated, “After reading it, I concluded that everything can be resolved. “Why don’t we also do that?”

They had a better than anticipated initial contact with the child. “They brought Rustam to us in the playroom when Yuri and I arrived.” Nika goes on, “You know, when I met him, he seemed like a child prodigy. I thought he was in diapers, but I was ready for a lot.” To be honest, I was astonished.

The timing of Nika and Yuri was ideal since Rustam, who communicated through gestures, was getting ready to be sent to a “house of the disabled.”

“And in a disabled home, he wouldn’t have survived,” Nika said, adding that trip would have been a one-way ticket.

The couple quickly filled in the documents, placed Rustam in the car and drove him to his new home in Moscow.

“I know that many adoptive parents worry about whether they can love someone else’s child as their own. I didn’t think about it,” Nika said, adding she is equally stern with him as she is with her biological daughter, Iya.
The parents also do not treat him any differently and expect the boy to work with them on his therapies.

In fact, despite Rustam protesting, she taught him how to walk, demanding her son move around the apartment on his crutches.
“Rus protested, cried, demanded to be carried…showed [his] character. But then he got down to business and very quickly walked at speed,” she said.

‘Such a freak’

Since Rustam joined the family, Nika is raising awareness, championing the rights and dignities of disabled people.

But people still take the opportunity to attack the young boy, some calling him a freak.
“One woman wrote to me: ‘let’s call things by their words, freak…’” Nika recalls of one message. “Or they often write: ‘How did you decide to do this, we would not be able to live next to such a freak.’”

To those comments, Nika lovingly responds, “I don’t know, maybe someone wants to always look at the beautiful. It’s more important to me that Rustam has the whole world inside.”
Though she’s learned to be thick-skinned, Nika admits the attacks can be hurtful. “[People] like to put up labels…If you don’t look like everyone else. A lot of evil, a lot.”

Despite cruel comments, Rustam’s mom and dad are supporting their son, making sure he knows “that everything was fine with him: two eyes, a nose, a mouth. Soon there will be two legs. He sees, hears, speaks.”

And the boy, who’s now about 10, is relying on his “brightness and courage,” styling his hair – perky ponytails and dreadlocks – and wearing bold clothing to express his colorful personality.

“Rus thinks very broadly and open-mindedly, sometimes making paradoxical conclusions. So, it was easy for me to persuade him to experiment boldly,” Nika says of her son. “Rustam doesn’t ask questions about his appearance at all. He repeats with pleasure that his whole family is beautiful, and he is so handsome in general.”

Unfortunately, Nika’s Instagram has since been deleted so we can no longer follow Rustam’s wild dance moves and awesome hair.

She previously said, “If my account should suddenly be blocked then I’ll probably feel better because I won’t see dozens of haters commenting about my son.”

It’s so sad that people have to say such cruel things to a beautiful couple who gave the world to a helpless little boy.

What do you think of this story? Please share your comments with us and then share the story so we can hear what others have to say!