Ukraine returned another 31 children abducted by Russia, Mykola Kuleba
31 Ukrainian children deported by the Russians are returning to Ukraine on April 8.
This was announced during the press conference by the Executive Director of Save Ukraine, the Commissioner of the President of Ukraine for Children's Rights (2014-2021), Mykola Kuleba, Censor.NET reports with reference to Ukrinform.
"Now 31 children are on their way to Kyiv. These children will arrive in the capital in 3-4 hours. This was our 5th rescue mission, and it was special not only in terms of the number of children we saved, but also in terms of complexity. Unfortunately, the grandmother who was supposed to pick up the two children died during this mission," he said.
According to Kuleba, because of this, not 33 children were returned to Ukraine, as planned, but 31. He clarified that it will be necessary to return the body of this woman to Ukraine and the children she was supposed to take.
Kuleba emphasized long-term and repeated interrogations by the FSB. "That's why it's not surprising that the grandmother's heart stopped," added the executive director of Save Ukraine.
He stated that when the parents and legal representatives of these children came to the camp to pick them up, the Russians did not allow them to enter the facility together.
"They (the Russians — ed.) kept them behind the fence and let the parents one by one into the facility where cameras were installed. They pressured the parents to thank the Russian Federation for keeping their children before taking the child away." - said Kuleba.
The former Commissioner of the President of Ukraine for children's rights noted that the Russians should identify the children (who were taken away — ed.) and hand over the relevant lists to the Red Cross so that Ukraine could find their parents.
"All the children they returned say that no one tried in any way to find their parents. We were looking for these children, and it was very difficult, because there are children who changed 5 different places of stay in 5 months - they were abandoned from one camp to another. There is a lot of evidence of what happened to these children there," said the executive director of Save Ukraine.
He specified that there are data on one and a half million Ukrainian children who ended up in the territory of the Russian Federation or in the captured territories after 2014.
"This is almost 20% of the children's population - we are talking about Crimea, Donbas, the occupied territories of other regions. And these are children who are hostages who, unfortunately, cannot return to Ukraine today for various reasons," Kuleba added.
