7 children returned to Ukrainian-controlled territory

On December 5, 7 more Ukrainian children who were illegally detained in Russia and in the temporarily occupied territories returned home.

This was reported by the “Bring Kids Back UA” initiative.

Among those returned are boys and girls aged 8 to 17. These are children from the Kherson and Kharkiv regions, as well as those whom the occupiers took deep into Russia — to the Kursk and Moscow regions, and the Republic of Mari El.

In particular, two brothers who were sent to a Russian orphanage after their motherʼs death, a child from the occupied Kherson region who was threatened with boarding school, and a teenager who was deprived of Ukrainian documents and forcibly transported to the Russian Federation returned home.

A nine-year-old girl from Izyum came under Russian shelling during the occupation of the city with her father and was seriously injured. The occupiers took her to a hospital in Belgorod, and then to a childrenʼs center in the Moscow region. Her father died.

The return of the children took place with the support of the US First Lady Melania Trump.

• The deportation of Ukrainian children is one of Russiaʼs war crimes, for which the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Putin and the Russian Childrenʼs Ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova. Ukraine has officially confirmed that Russia has abducted almost 19 500 Ukrainian children. The Russian Federation itself says that it has taken away 744 000 children. Only about 1 800 have been returned to Ukraine. Ukraine also has evidence that Belarus is participating in the deportation of Ukrainian children.
• On December 3, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution demanding the return of all illegally removed Ukrainian children.

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