Since beginning of full-scale war, Ukraine has returned 5757 adults and 1378 children from Russia, - Lubinets
Since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, 65 exchanges have taken place between Ukraine and Russia, during which 5757 Ukrainians have been returned, 294 of whom are civilian hostages of the Russian Federation.
This was announced by the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights at a briefing in Kyiv on the occasion of his third anniversary in office on Wednesday, July 2, DW reports, Censor.NET informs.
According to the ombudsman, 1378 children forcibly taken to the territory controlled by the Russian Federation were returned to Ukraine.
According to Lubinets, 42 member countries of the international coalition are involved in the process of returning the children, with Qatar as the main intermediary.
According to the Commissioner, the scale of deportation is "huge." According to Ukraine's estimates, about 1.5 million Ukrainian children could potentially be forcibly taken to the territory of the Russian Federation.
"No one knows how many of them were actually deported. Because officially we cannot get any data from the territory of the Russian Federation or the TOT. We have tried through international organizations and intermediaries, but Russia closes information related to Ukrainian children as much as possible," Lubinets said.
He added that the Russian Federation takes out, Russifies and assimilates children in order to use them as the next generation of Russian soldiers.
In addition, the Ombudsman noted that the most difficult thing is to return civilian hostages from the Russian Federation, as there is no legal procedure for exchanges, and no direct channel with any international partner in this matter has been established. There is also a lack of pressure on the aggressor state in this matter.
Lubinets expressed hope that an intermediary country would appear between Kyiv and Moscow, which would be able to raise the issue of returning civilians to Ukraine and visit them in places of detention. According to him, such countries could be Turkey, Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia.
The Ombudsman said that Ukraine has a special database of civilians held hostage by Russia. According to Kyiv, there are about 16,000 people there, of whom about 1,800 have been verified, and the rest are unknown.
"We have confirmed information that Ukrainian citizens have been detained for years without even being suspected of a criminal offense. They just bring them in and lock them up, do not allow lawyers, and do not provide information," Lubinets said.
