Russia offers money to kidnapped Ukrainian children for moving to country
Child with a toy in hand (photo: Getty Images)
Russian forces, after kidnapping Ukrainian children in the temporarily occupied territories, offered them 100,000 rubles to move to Russian cities of their choice, according to a special investigation by The Independent.
In his article, British newspaper journalist Tom Watling tells the story of five teenagers who were taken by the enemy to Russia or the occupied territory before being rescued and returned to Ukraine.
He interviewed five Ukrainian teenagers aged 12 to 17 who shared their experiences in Russian summer camps.
During the interview with the journalist, 16-year-old Lisa Batsura recounted how a Russian official once came to their classroom and offered each child 100,000 rubles for moving to any Russian city of their choice.
According to reports, two of the five children spent at least four months in summer camps in the occupied territories of the Kherson region and Crimea. Three of them remained there for over eight months. All five children were rescued by the charitable organization Save Ukraine.
According to Ukrainian officials, around 20,000 Ukrainian children have been sent to summer camps since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Nearly a quarter of those captured are orphans or children who have been left without parental care.
According to the Ukrainian government, over 70 camps for the forced re-education of children have been identified, including in Belarus, occupied Crimea, and even the Russian Far East.
As The Independent notes, the issue of returning these abducted children to Ukraine will be a key topic at the peace summit in Switzerland, which is taking place this weekend.
In a comment on the investigation, Dmytro Lubinets, Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, stated that the Russian forces are doing everything possible to block the return of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children.
The British business magazine Financial Times has discovered 4 new profiles of abducted Ukrainian children on Russian adoption websites.
Earlier, it was reported that the White House has new and credible information that the Russian authorities are placing abducted Ukrainian children on Russian adoption websites.
