“According to the chairman of the Presidential Office, the children lived under occupation for three years, maintaining Ukrainian identity, despite pressure and threats. This is only part of a large -scale problem: according to Ukraine, thousands of children were illegally exported during the war”, – WRITE: www.radiosvoboda.org
“They lived in occupation for three years. There were threats, the threat of searches, they were forced to go to Russian schools. Nevertheless, the girls maintained Ukrainian identity. They studied online in Ukrainian schools, avoided imposed “patriotic” measures and fought daily for the right to be themselves. Now they are safe, near their relatives, and they receive support and help, ”Yermak added.
He thanked the Ukrainian network for the rights of the child for their assistance in saving children.
According to the official data of Ukraine, more than 20,000 Ukrainian children were found in Russia during a full -scale war in Russia and the occupied territories. At the same time, the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights Dmitry Lubinets suggested that Russia illegally exported about 150 thousand children from Ukraine, and the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for the Rights of the Child Daria Gerasimchuk called the figure in “several hundred thousand children, ie somewhere 200-300 thousand”.
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In March 2023, the International Criminal Court in the Hague issued warrants for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the children’s Ombudsman of the Russian Federation Maria Lviv-Belova. They are suspected of committing war crimes – violent deportations and movement of the population, including children, from the occupied territories of Ukraine.
In July 2023, the Russian Ombudsman Maria Lviv-Belova stated that, since the beginning of a full-scale invasion, about 4.8 million inhabitants of Ukraine have been “from the beginning of a full-scale invasion”, of which more than 700,000 were children. According to her, most Ukrainian children allegedly came to Russia with their parents or other relatives.