24 more kids displaced by Russia return to Ukraine

A total of 24 children who were earlier displaced from the Russia-occupied territories have returned to Ukraine, says Oleksandr Prokudin, the Kherson region governor.

“This rescue mission was one of the most complicated ones. Russians have been interrogating the parents of these kids for 13 hours and forced them to be in a propaganda video for the TV,” he wrote.

Prokudin thanked volunteers from the Save Ukraine charity foundation who managed to return the children home.

Mykola Kuleba, the director of Save Ukraine, reported on 8 April that another group of 31 children had returned to Ukraine.

“It was our fifth rescue mission, and it was really special not just in terms of how many kids we saved, but also in terms of difficulty. Sadly, a grandmother who was supposed to pick up two of these kids died before the mission was complete,” Kuleba said. This was the reason only 31 children returned home instead of 33.

UNIAN reported in late March that Ukraine had credentials of 19,514 Ukrainian children illegally deported to Russia, including over 4,000 orphans. The Ukrainian Children of War website provides the figure of 16,226 children. So far, only 308 have returned home.

In the autumn of 2022, children from the occupied regions were sent “on vacation” to children’s camps in Crimea. The occupying authorities told the parents that they would return in 10-14 days, but they never did. Save Ukraine Foundation spokeswoman Olha Yerokhina said there were at least two known cases of violence against Ukrainian children from this group.

In addition, Russia displaced orphans from the occupied territories. In particular, Verstka reported that 108 children 5 to 16 years old from Donbass were given to foster parents in Russia.

The International Criminal Court in The Hague (ICC) considers this a war crime, namely the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children from the occupied territories to Russia. On suspicion of committing this crime, the court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova.