“The head of the President’s Office Andriy Yermak managed to return a 17-year-old boy and his mother from the occupied territory of Ukraine as part of the Bring Kids Back UA initiative. The boy spent more than three years under the pressure of the occupation authorities, but continued to study online at a Ukrainian college”, — write: www.radiosvoboda.org
“The 17-year-old boy spent more than three years in the occupation – in an atmosphere of constant pressure from the occupation authorities and fear of forced mobilization into the Russian army. Russian soldiers regularly visited homes: checked documents, conducted searches and interrogations. Even speaking Ukrainian was dangerous, but the boy still studied online at a Ukrainian college,” the official said.
He clarified that the return took place within the framework of the Bring Kids Back UA initiative.
According to official Ukrainian data, during the full-scale war in Russia and the occupied territories, more than 20,000 Ukrainian children ended up. At the same time, the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, assumed that Russia had illegally removed about 150,000 children from Ukraine, while the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Darya Gerasymchuk, called the number “several hundred thousand children, i.e., about 200-300 thousand.”
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In March 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Children’s Ombudsman of the Russian Federation, Maria Lvova-Belova. They are suspected of committing war crimes – forcible deportations and displacement of the population, including children, from the occupied territories of Ukraine.
In July 2023, the Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, stated that since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Russia has “adopted” about 4.8 million residents of Ukraine, of which more than 700,000 are children. According to her, most Ukrainian children allegedly came to Russia with their parents or other relatives.