Ombudsman: Relatives of Kyiv officials left Ukraine under the guise of evacuating orphans

Dmytro Lubinets, the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights, said that the employees of his office discovered that close relatives of Kyiv officials could disguise themselves as accompanying orphans in order to illegally travel abroad.

During the monitoring visits, the employees of the Ombudsmanʼs Office discovered that the officials of the Service for Children and Families of the City of Kyiv and the Center for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation of Children No. 1 of the City of Kyiv sent their close relatives to accompany the children abroad.

In March 2022, 68 pupils of the Center for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation of Children No. 1 of the city of Kyiv, accompanied by 20 adults, were evacuated to Germany.

The employees of the Ombudsmanʼs Office were supposed to visit these children, but they were not allowed there, because there were no escorts from Ukraine on the territory. Therefore, the children are completely under the care of the German side.

The Germans said that 55 children were taken to them, but the order of the director of the Center shows that 68 were evacuated to Germany. The whereabouts of 13 more children is unknown.

Then, the employees of the Ombudsmanʼs Office visited the Service for Children and Family Affairs and the Center for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation of Children No. 1 in Kyiv to find out the circumstances, familiarize themselves with the evacuation documents, and talk with the management.

It turned out that the management of the institutions does not have documents on the conditions of childrenʼs stay under the care of the German side.

Therefore, the Office of the Ombudsman found out that people who have no relation to this field were mentioned as escorts in official orders. They were employed in institutions the day before the evacuation or did not do so at all. Among them is a close relative of the head of the Service for Children and Families in the city of Kyiv and a close relative of the head of the Center for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation of Children No. 1 in the city of Kyiv.

“Each of the accompanying men resigned after being out of state, and none of them are currently employed by these agencies. Whatʼs more, they did not return to Ukraine. This fact suggests that this was all a planned action," Lubinets emphasized.

The fact that some of the accompanying children did not return to Ukraine was not reported by the management of the institutions at meetings or in reports. However, the managers went on a "business trip" to Germany to meet with relatives. One of the leaders does not have a report on such business trips, and the other reports for 2022 and 2023 repeat each other (they do not contain information about childrenʼs problems, the establishment of German guardianship, the release of Ukrainian escorts, etc.).

Dmytro Lubinets sent letters to the Prosecutor Generalʼs Office, the National Police, the Ministry of Social Policy, the National Social Service Service, the KMDA with all the discovered facts. The Ombudsman is awaiting an investigation.