Children kidnapped by Russia are back in Ukraine – after months in Kremlin camps

Moments after the bus carrying him and other children from Russian-occupied territories arrived in the Ukrainian capital, the 10-year-old boy disappeared into his father’s arms.

Denis Zaporoshenko hugged his son tightly and kissed him on the forehead, then tearfully hugged his two daughters among a group of 17 Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russian forces months ago.

The reunion was organized by the NGO Save Ukraine, which is fighting to stop the illegal deportation of children from the territory of Ukraine to the Russian Federation – the reason that a few days ago the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin.

Kiev said more than 16,000 children from Ukraine have been trafficked to Russia since the invasion began on Feb. 24, 2022, including hundreds kidnapped from orphanages, according to the International Criminal Court, though Russia denied the charges, saying the Ukrainians saved the Ukrainian people. of atrocities. the war.

The last time Denis Zaporoshenko saw his children was last October in Kherson, Ukraine’s only regional capital, which was occupied by Russian forces after the invasion. Anticipating fierce fighting in his hometown as Ukrainian forces approached, he made the difficult decision to send his children to a camp in Russian-controlled Crimea for safety.

Extortion and intimidation of Ukrainian families

Russian officials promised him that his children would stay there for one to two weeks and come back. “When we realized that they should not be allowed to go, it was too late,” he told AFP.

According to lawyer Miroslava Kharchenko who works with Save Ukraine, the occupation forces have pressured Ukrainian families to send their children on “holiday”. “[Ρώσοι αξιωματούχοι] They gave the parents an hour to think about it, and told them that if the Ukrainians got there, they would also bring in American mercenaries who would beat and rape the children.” And after “extortion, manipulation and intimidation, they took the children.”

Some of these desperate parents made the decision to leave the free lands of Ukraine behind and go to Crimea in search of their children. But for the first time, Save Ukraine has organized a mission to bring together Ukrainians whose people cannot find them. He rented a bus, which went from Poland and went through Belarus to Russia and from there to the occupied Crimea, where the children were placed and taken.

Brainwashing Ukrainian children

Some of these children described to AFP the brainwashing they were subjected to in the camps.

If we don’t sing the Russian national anthem, they force us to write a report explaining why. “On New Year’s Eve they made us listen to Putin’s speech,” said 15-year-old Taisiya.

“Everything was like in the usual camps,” said Zaporoshenko’s 11-year-old daughter Yana, but “they made us sing and dance when the inspectors came” from Moscow.

Inessa Virtus, 43, said her son is back “very seriously” after their long separation. “He looked at me and said, ‘Mom, I don’t want to tell you what I’ve been through, you’re going to lose sleep at night.

Save Ukraine provides psychological support to children who have been living away from their families in the occupied territories of Ukraine for months. According to Kharchenko, her organization is “doing everything possible to ensure that children and their parents do not return to danger zones.”