More than 30 children have been brought back to Ukraine after being illegally taken to Russia from territories annexed by Moscow, a Ukranian charity has revealed.
The children had been taken from the country’s northeastern region of Kharkiv and the southern region of Kherson, said Save Ukraine, which fights what it says are illegal deportations of Ukrainian children to Russian-controlled territory.
However, Moscow, which controls parts of Ukraine’s east and south, has denied abducting children and said they have been transported away for their own safety.
‘Today we are welcoming home 31 more children who have been illegally taken by Russians from occupied territories,’ Mykola Kuleba, head of the Save Ukraine charity, wrote on social media on Saturday, April 8.
According to footage released this weekend, the children, who carried suitcases and bags, crossed the border on foot and later boarded a bus to continue their journey.
Kuleba praised the ‘heroic mothers’ who had travelled to retrieve their children in what it called the ‘most difficult’ of the charity’s rescue missions to date.
A grandmother who had been due to reunite with two of her grandchildren died suddenly on the trip from ‘stress’ and the children had to remain in Russia, Kuleba, Ukraine’s former commissioner for children’s rights, told a media briefing in Kyiv.
More than 16,000 Ukrainian children have been deported to Russia since the invasion launched on February 24, 2022, according to the Ukranian government, with many allegedly placed in institutions and foster homes.
Last month, the International Criminal Court announced an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin on the war crime accusation of unlawfully deporting Ukrainian children.
