Children’s Ombudsman Herasymchuk: Ukraine managed to return 388 children deported by Russia
This was reported by Daria Herasymchuk, Advisor to the Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights and Child Rehabilitation, Censor.NET reports citing Interfax-Ukraine.
"As of today, we have managed to return 388 children who were deported or forcibly displaced to the Ukrainian state, with a huge team," Herasymchuk said during a meeting of the Council for Human Rights, Gender Equality and Diversity at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.
The Commissioner noted that the Russians already have much more scenarios for deporting and illegally displacing children than they did in 2014, when Russia occupied Crimea (in particular, the so-called "Train of Hope" social project, which illegally took Crimean children to Russia and sent them for adoption).
"Today, we see six scenarios, but we are convinced that there are many more. And the Russians are not stopping," she added.
We are talking about a scenario where Russia first kills Ukrainians and then steals their children, the Presidential Ombudsman noted. The second scenario, she said, is when the Russian Federation separates Ukrainian children from their parents during filtration.
"We are also talking about the stories of children who were 'pulled', I can't say otherwise, right out of their homes, from their relatives and simply taken temporarily to the temporarily occupied territories, but then sent to Russia and even illegally placed under the care of Russians," Herasymchuk stressed.
The fourth scenario is when the Russians refuse to agree on humanitarian corridors for the Ukrainian authorities to take children out of institutional care, create an artificial humanitarian crisis for them and then take them away. Gerasymchuk stressed that today Ukraine continues to search for these children throughout the Russian Federation and the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories, as children are constantly being separated and moved.
"The fifth scenario is the most widespread, when Russians create conditions in the occupied territories that are completely unsuitable for a child to live in. And then parents are forced to voluntarily sign a consent to take their children to Russian camps, which are located either in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine - Crimea or in the territory of the Russian Federation," the advisor said.
According to her, the sixth scenario is when the Russians conduct "selection", mandatory medical examinations of children in the temporarily occupied territories, in which healthy children receive fictitious diagnoses. After that, the child allegedly urgently needs treatment in Russia, she added.
