Ukraine: NGOs Rescue Ukrainian Children Deported by Russia

Human Rights Without Frontiers calls upon the UN, the EU and states supporting Ukraine to fund Ukrainian NGOs rescuing at high risks Ukrainian children deported by and to Russia, writes Willy Fautre.

Since the beginning of the year, Kyiv has publicly reported that several Ukrainian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have rescued over a hundred Ukrainian children deported by and to Russia.

Only NGOs can translate words into concrete rescue operations; international institutions or states cannot. In return, these NGOs would expect the United Nations, the European Union, and various governmental institutions supporting Ukraine against Russia’s unprovoked aggression to spontaneously and generously fund their activities, but this is not the case.

Rescue Operations in May in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson Oblasts

On 17th May, Ukraine returned four children from Russian-occupied territory in Kherson Oblast, according to local governor Oleksandr Prokudin.

The evacuated children were three brothers and a sister, aged between two and 12 years.

The rescue operation was conducted by the children’s parents in collaboration with Save Ukraine, a Ukrainian humanitarian NGO.

The children arrived in Ukraine-controlled territory and received psychological and medical support, the governor stated.

On 15 May, the Reintegration Ministry reported that the Ukrainian NGO Child Rights Network brought back a 17-year-old orphan, Denys, from Russian-held territories in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. He was 16 years old when he was abducted. At the time, he was living in Kherson with his two deaf parents, who could not speak or resist when Russian troops took him.

Denys spent 10 months in a Russian camp in occupied Crimea until volunteers from an NGO rescued him. He had been living in Russian-occupied territories under the supervision of his neighbour and searching for ways to move to Ukraine-controlled territory since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, according to the ministry’s statement.

Denys’s aunt previously appealed to the ministry to help bring the boy back. Currently, Denys lives under his aunt’s guardianship.

The boy was sent to a rehabilitation centre in the city of Truskavets in Lviv Oblast for further recovery.

On 14th May, Child Rights Network returned six children from Russian-occupied territories in Kherson Oblast.

Rescue Operations in March

On 22nd March, nine Ukrainian children previously deported by Russia or held in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied territories were brought back to Ukraine, stated Ukraine’s Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets.

The children were returned with the help of Qatar, which has played a major mediation role in returning Ukrainian children who had been deported or forcibly transferred to Russia, and within the framework of Ukraine’s president’s approved action plan “Bring Kids Back UA“.

According to Lubinets, two three-year-old sisters, a six-year-old boy, and a ten-year-old girl were rescued from orphanages after their guardians and relatives appealed for their return. A 12-year-old girl was reunited with her mother.

“Children were forced to attend Russian schools, where they were told that there was no independent state of Ukraine,” Andriy Yermak, head of Ukraine’s Presidential Office, wrote on Telegram.

According to Lubinets, one of the returned girls had a disability and was not given proper medical care while being held in Russian-occupied territory. She will now reportedly receive appropriate care.

Rescue Operations in February

An international team of investigators tracked down eight Ukrainian children believed to have been abducted during Russia’s invasion, reported Anna Holligan in The Hague and Diana Kuryshko, BBC Ukraine correspondent in an article titled “Ukraine’s missing children tracked down in Russia by digital sleuths”.

More than 60 detectives used digital open-source techniques to trace the missing children, whose presence in Russia had been mentioned in propaganda.

Experts from 23 countries at Europol’s headquarters in The Hague used advanced facial recognition to find recent images of the children online. Geolocation experts analysed photos and videos and used satellite data to determine their locations.

According to the BBC, 18 Ukrainian children who were transferred to Russia and then returned home participated in a recreational camp in Irshava in the Zakarpattia region of western Ukraine, organised by a foundation established by a Ukrainian billionaire.

Statistics: Only 2.5% of Children Taken by Russia Were Rescued

According to the official Ukrainian Database of Children in War, about 20,000 children have been separated from their families in Ukraine and forcibly transferred by Russia to its own territories and occupied Ukrainian regions, where they have been forcibly registered as Russian citizens since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Many journalists, media outlets, and officials continue to write that fewer than 400 children have been brought back home, as mentioned on the Ukrainian Database’s website. These statistics, however, are outdated, reflecting figures from 2022. They have not been updated due to a lack of staff and fail to include more recent cases of enforced disappearances. Over a hundred children are thought to have been rescued since 1st January 2024. Most of them were not on the Database lists.

______________________________________________________________________________

Alona Lebedieva, speaking in the European Parliament.

“The aggressor country must pay for this war and for all war crimes committed.

“As the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced, the sanctions (against Russia) should affect those who are directly involved in the military invasion, occupation of Ukraine and brutal kidnapping of children,” – Alona Lebedieva.

______________________________________________________________________________

The exact figures remain unclear, and the whereabouts of many children are mostly unknown.

The BBC has compiled evidence from many children who said they were separated from their parents, not allowed to go home, or call their relatives.

In 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova for the unlawful deportation of children.

Russia denies the accusation, claiming it has protected vulnerable children by moving them from a war zone for their own safety.

Maria Lvova-Belova states that around 730,000 children have been brought to Russia, most of them with their parents or other relatives, and that 2,000 children were ‘evacuated’ from Ukrainian orphanages for their ‘safety’. She does not, however, mention forcible displacement.

Unlike the issue of exchanging war prisoners, Russia remains far from any international attempt to reunify the deported Ukrainian children with their original families and repatriate the orphans to their country of origin, preferring instead to promote their illegal adoption by Russian families and thereby forcibly russify them in flagrant violation of international conventions.

See the original article by Willy Fautré on the HRWF website here.

UN Human Rights Day December 10th: 1,000s of children kidnapped by Russia should not be forgotten, says Human Rights Without Frontiers

Click here for more News & Current Affairs at EU Today

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________