Thirty-one children were reunited with their families in Ukraine this weekend after a long operation to repatriate them from Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea, where they had been taken from areas occupied by Russian forces during the war.
Mothers hugged sons and daughters as they crossed the border from Belarus to Ukraine on Friday after an arduous rescue mission that involved traveling through four countries.
Thirty-one children have returned to Ukraine after being illegally transported to Russia from territories occupied by Moscow, the NGO Save Ukraine announced today on social media. "Today we welcome another 31 children returning to their homes, who were illegally transported by Russians from occupied territories," wrote Mikolas Kuleba, an official of the non-governmental organization.
These children had been taken to Russia. from the regions of Kharkiv, in northeastern Ukraine, and Kherson, in the south, clarified the organization, whose main mission is to fight the "displacement" Ukranopoulos, as he characterizes it.
According to the NGO, the children carrying suitcases and bags crossed the border on foot on Friday, together with their relatives, then boarded a bus to continue their journey.
Mikolas Kuleba greeted the " heroic mothers" who went to pick up their children and stated that it was the "hardest" mission than the ones the NGO had to carry out until now.
An elderly woman who was going to bring back two grandchildren died of "stress", Kuleba wrote on Facebook, clarifying that the Ukrainian women women were subjected to a "13-hour interrogation" by the Russian security services (FSB).
Kyiv authorities estimate that more than 16,000 Ukrainian children have been "abducted" and transferred to Russia since the start of the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and many have reportedly been given to foster families.
Moscow denies these claims, and states that it "rescued" Ukrainians by removing them from the fighting and that it is implementing procedures to reunite them with their families.
On March 17, the International Criminal Court issued a historic arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin, who " allegedly responsible for the war crime of illegal displacement" of Ukrainian minors "from occupied territories of Ukraine to the Russian Federation".
The Hague-based ICC also issued an international arrest warrant for Maria Lvova-Belova, the commissioner for the rights of the child in the Russian Federation , for similar reasons.
Source: APE-MPE
