A 12-year-old boy was returned from the territory temporarily captured by the Russians in the Kherson region. His name is Andriy.
This was announced by the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets.
The boyʼs older sister appealed to the Ombudsmanʼs Office with a request to take him out of the occupation. In the occupied part of the Kherson region, the boy lived with his grandmother, because his mother died in the summer of 2022.
"During the occupation, they experienced all the "advantages of the Russian world": intimidation, psychological pressure, visits by representatives of the occupation authorities. They threatened to take the boy away from his grandmother and place him in an orphanage, as he was left without a legal representative," Lubinets said.
On January 1, the boy and his grandmother found themselves in the territory controlled by Ukraine. The first day of the new year symbolically became the first day of a new life for this family.
- At the beginning of December, Russia returned eight children to Ukraine. Qatar was also a mediator in this process.
- The deportation of Ukrainian children is one of Russiaʼs war crimes, for which the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin and the Childrenʼs Ombudsman of the Russian Federation Maria Lvova-Belova. Currently, at least 19,546 Ukrainian children are known to have been forcibly deported to Russia, less than 400 of them have been returned. Ukraine also has evidence that Belarus participates in the deportation of Ukrainian children.