They had been torn from their families and illegally brought to Russia from Ukrainian territories occupied by Moscow. This Saturday, April 8, 31 children returned home, the NGO Save Ukraine announced on social networks. They had been abducted from the regions of Kharkiv (northeast) and Kherson (south), detailed the association, whose main mission is to fight what it describes as "deportations" of Ukrainian children.
With their suitcases and bags, they crossed the border on foot on Friday with relatives, before boarding a bus to continue their journey. Mykola Kuleba, an NGO official, praised the "heroic mothers" who came to pick up their children and said it was the "most difficult" mission the NGO had to carry out so far.
An elderly woman, who was to bring back two grandchildren, died on this occasion, of "stress", he lamented, specifying that Ukrainian women had been subjected by the Russian security services (FSB) to a " thirteen-hour interrogation”.
Since February 24, 2022 and the start of the war, more than 16,000 children have been "abducted", according to authorities in kyiv. Many were reportedly placed in foster homes. For its part, Moscow has always denied these accusations, claiming to have "saved" these children by keeping them away from the fighting and to have put in place procedures to reunite them with their families.
The International Criminal Court issued a historic arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 17. He is "allegedly responsible for the war crime of illegal deportation" of Ukrainian minors "from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation". The court, based in The Hague, has also issued an international arrest warrant against Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian commissioner for children, on similar grounds.
