Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
10-04-2023
KYIV/ MOSCOW: More than 30 children have been reunited with their families in Ukraine this week after a long operation to bring them back from Russia, where they had been taken from occupied areas during the war, a humanitarian group has said.
Kyiv has estimated nearly 19,500 children have been taken to Russia since Moscow invaded in February last year, in what it condemns as illegal deportations.
Moscow, which controls parts of Ukraine’s east and south, has denied abducting children and said they have been transported away for their own safety.
On Friday, the Save Ukraine charity said the children and their relatives had crossed the border into Kyiv-controlled territory.
According to released footage, the children, who carried suitcases and bags, crossed the border on foot and later boarded a bus to continue their journey.
“Now, the fifth rescue mission is nearing its completion. It was special regarding the number of children we managed to return and also because of its complexity,” said Mykola Kuleba, the founder of Save Ukraine.
Kuleba praised the “heroic mothers” who had travelled to retrieve their children in what he called the “most difficult” of the charity’s rescue missions to date.
The group helped the Ukrainian relatives of children who had been taken to Russia with the logistics, transport and planning needed to embark on the long journey to fetch their children and bring them back.
A grandmother who had been due to reunite with two of her grandchildren died suddenly on the trip from “stress” and the children had to remain in Russia, Kuleba, Ukraine’s former commissioner for children’s rights, told a media briefing in Kyiv.
Writing on Facebook, he said the Ukrainian relatives had been subjected to a “13-hour interrogation” by Russia’s FSB security service. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
