“The Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Yermak announced the release of 17 Ukrainian children and teenagers from the occupation, revealing the details of their life under the control of the Russian military”, — write: www.radiosvoboda.org
“The occupiers forcibly sent a 17-year-old boy to a military camp – trenches, military training, weapons, drones – all under the control of the Russian military and without the consent of his parents. Another 17-year-old boy was detained during a search of his house: equipment was taken, he was interrogated through relatives in the Armed Forces, and then they came and threatened his family more than once. The grandparents had to hide the seven-year-old boy at home, because the occupation authorities were preparing him for “removal”. A 12-year-old girl and her nine-year-old brother faced daily bullying at school, where they heard that they “should be killed because they are Ukrainians.” Today, all these children are finally at home – safe, in free Ukraine,” the official wrote.
Yermak added that the children are receiving the necessary help, renewing their documents and “returning to a normal life.”
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.”
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.