Children deportation from Ukraine - 9 minors returned
Photo: Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets (UNIAN)
Ukraine successfully managed to bring home 9 children who were held captive by Russian occupiers, according to Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets.
"Two children had been on the temporarily occupied territory for a long time, and now, finally, we were able to reunite them with their parents," he said.
According to Lubinets, they also managed to bring back a boy whom the Russians accused of blowing up a bridge, held in prison for a month, and interrogated.
"He went through all the circles of hell, including filtration. But now he is with his mother in Ukraine," the Ombudsman noted.
Lubinets emphasized that every child's return is like a special operation.
Deportation of Ukrainian children to the Russian Federation
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia has consistently deported Ukrainian children to annexed Crimea, Belarus, or remote regions of Russia.
Ukraine has been actively engaged in the process of returning abducted children held by the occupiers. For example, yesterday, the Minister for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories, Iryna Vereshchuk, announced that another child from the territories occupied by Russia had been successfully evacuated. The boy is currently in Kyiv.
However, earlier, Lubinets urged parents of deported children not to attempt to bring them back on their own. The occupiers not only refuse to return the children but also detain and interrogate the parents.
