The Office of the Ombudsman: There are 27 000 civilian hostages in Russia

Currently, at least 19 453 Ukrainian children are known to have been forcibly deported to Russia.

The Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets stated this at the briefing.

As of the end of May, Russia is also illegally holding approximately 27 000 Ukrainian civilian hostages.

"This is an insane number of our citizens who are actually being held captive by the Russians," Lubinets noted.

According to him, at the beginning of the full-scale war, about 700 000 children lived in the territories that are now occupied.

"How many of them now remain in the temporarily occupied territory, and how many were taken to the territory of the Russian Federation, we do not know. We can only speculate. But I think that when we liberate all Ukrainian territories, it will be possible to at least roughly understand how many children are currently in the territory of the Russian Federation," the ombudsman noted.

At the same time, he emphasized that it is already known about the forced deportation of at least 19 453 Ukrainian children, but in reality this number is much higher. Also, the authorities only have a rough understanding of where these children may be.

• The Ukrainian authorities have confirmed that the forced transfer of Ukrainian children and prisoners of war took place through the territory of Belarus with the participation of Minsk.