deportation to Russia
31 abducted children returned to Ukraine
04/08/2023, 8:00 p.m
Under the pretext of a summer camp, Ukrainian children are being kidnapped in Russian territories. In order to get them back, the families have to travel to Russia themselves – a feat that involves a high level of risk. They get support from an NGO. According to his own statements, he has now successfully completed a particularly difficult mission.
The Ukrainian non-governmental organization (NGO) “Save Ukraine” says it has managed to bring 31 children kidnapped to Russia back to their families. According to video recordings, the children crossed the border between Russian-occupied and Ukrainian-controlled territory on foot with backpacks and suitcases. According to Save Ukraine, they had previously been kidnapped from Russian-occupied areas in the Kharkiv and Cherson regions.
The head of Save Ukraine, Mykola Kuleba, wrote in online networks of “31 children illegally kidnapped by Russians” that his organization is now welcoming. It was the most difficult mission of his NGO so far. “Save Ukraine” campaigns for the repatriation of kidnapped Ukrainian children. Kuleba praised the “heroic mothers” who went in search of their children. The Russian secret service FSB subjected the women to a 13-hour interrogation, an elderly woman who was looking for two small children had died due to “stress”.
The children are said to come from the occupied parts of the Ukrainian regions of Kharkiv and Cherson. Her parents were under a lot of pressure to send their children to a summer camp, it was said at a press conference in Kiev after the children’s return. Once in Russia, the children lived in adverse circumstances, said Kuleba, who was formerly Ukraine’s commissioner for children’s rights. “There were kids who changed their location five times in five months, and some kids said they lived with rats and cockroaches.”
“Were locked in buildings”
Three children who returned to their families in Ukraine as part of a previous rescue mission reported that they had to live in Russian camps for four to six months. They were always taken to a different place. “We were locked in a separate building,” Vitaly, a child from the Kherson region whose age was not known, said at the press conference. He added that they were told their parents didn’t want them anymore.
According to the government in Kiev, since the start of the Russian war of aggression on February 24, 2022, more than 16,000 Ukrainian children have been kidnapped to Russia. A large part of them was accommodated in homes and with foster families. Moscow denies the allegations and claims to have saved the children from the horrors of war. In March, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his child protection officer Maria Lwova-Belowa for the alleged kidnapping of Ukrainian children.