While their parents were waiting in line for water, the children disappeared from the shelters. They were taken away by the Russian military.
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This is not an exceptional story, but one of the documented cases of deportation of Ukrainian children, which Daria Kasyanova, Head of the Board of the Ukrainian Child Rights Network, tells in an interview with HotNews.ro.
During the talks in Istanbul, the Ukrainian side handed over a list of 339 children whose whereabouts have been confirmed. But there has been little progress in these negotiations: Russia has publicly stated that it is considering the return of only 10 of them.
“This clearly shows the real level of unwillingness to return our children. And I understand perfectly well why: as soon as they admit this, it will mean that the warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for the abduction of children was fair,” said Daria Kasyanova.
According to officially confirmed data, at least 19,546 Ukrainian children have been forcibly transferred to Russia since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.
Almost all of them are from the occupied territories. About 1.6 million more children remain under occupation and face the same risk of being taken away, losing contact with their families, and ending up in the Russian system.
Children were taken with and without their families, from sanatoriums and shelters, and from their homes. Often, when parents were nearby but unable to intervene.
“My mom was in the garden. She came back and the children were taken away. They didn’t even let us talk,” says Kasyanova.
Among those abducted were children from Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions. Many had parents or relatives in Ukraine who tried to bring them home – but faced demands that were difficult or impossible to meet.
The Russian side forces Ukrainian parents or relatives:
- to come to Russia or the occupied territory in person;
- obtain Russian citizenship;
- arrange for guardianship or adoption in accordance with Russian law.
In a number of cases, people were directly denied the right to apply for guardianship on Ukrainian documents.
The children who managed to return report strong psychological pressure and attempts to convince them that “Ukraine does not need them.”
As of now, only 1359 children have been returned. Most of them were returned through individual negotiations, often with the participation of intermediaries from other countries or international organizations.