look. Return of 31 Ukrainian children from Russia, reunion creates emotional moment | outside

According to their stories, the children were also brainwashed and mentally abused in the past year. For example, they were told that their parents no longer wanted to see them and were moved to other camps over and over again. They were literally trapped in there.

They had no idea what would happen to them. For example, 14-year-old Dasha Rak wanted to leave the occupied city of Kherson with her twin sister and thought about going to a holiday camp in the annexed Crimea. Once there, there was no going back. “They said we’d adopt, we’d have guardians,” Dasha said Saturday after her emotional return home. “When they first told us we had to stay longer, we all started crying.”

Dasha and her sister’s mother drove across four countries to finally see her daughters again after a year with the help of a humanitarian organization. She had to pass through Poland, Belarus and Russia to the camp in the Crimea. There she saw the conditions in which children live. “It was heartbreaking to see the children who were left behind crying behind the fence.”

According to Ukraine, there are approximately 19,500 children similarly detained in Russia or occupied territories. The international community sees the matter as kidnapping or deportation of children and is prosecuting Russia for that. President Putin is being personally prosecuted for it at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, just like the Russian Ombudsman for Children, Maria Alexeyevna Lvova Belova. Russia says the children were taken for their own safety.

This is the fifth time that the children have been repatriated to their home country thanks to Save Ukraine. This is a complicated process, says founder Mykola Quiliba. He saw how children were treated in recent times, and no one in Russia made any effort to find their parents. “There are children who changed their positions five times in five months, and some say they lived with rats and cockroaches.”

Reuters asked Russia for a response, but has not yet received a response. Earlier this week, Lvova-Belova said no one moved children against their parents’ wishes, unless their parents were anonymous. She says permission was always asked.

This is not much thought of internationally, after an arrest warrant was also issued against Lvova-Belova. Meanwhile, a lawyer for Save Ukraine is gathering evidence of human rights abuses. “Each story is a whole series of international violations that cannot go unpunished.”