24 children return to native Kherson after release from Russian captivity

Another 24 children returned home after being abducted by Russia.

Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson regional military administration, announced on Facebook that relatives, city authorities, and law enforcement met the children in their native city of Kherson, Ukraine's southern city that had been under Russian occupation from March 2022 to November 2022.

"Twenty-four more children from the Kherson region are finally at home. Today I met them in Kherson to talk and give nice gifts," the statement reads.

According to Prokudin, this is one of the most challenging rescue missions: the Russians interrogated the children for 13 hours and later forced them to participate in a propaganda report.

As the head of the region noted, the main thing is that now the children are at home with their relatives. He expressed his gratitude to the Save Ukraine Charitable Foundation volunteers, who rescued young Ukrainians from Russian captivity.

We will remind you that 31 children from the Kherson and Kharkiv regions who had been abducted and deported to Russia or temporarily occupied territories returned home on April 8. 

After returning to Ukraine, children deported by the Russian Federation reported beatings and other punishments for refusing to sing the Russian national anthem and mentioning that they were Ukrainians.

As of now, more than 19,000 children are currently known to have been abducted and deported from the occupied territories to Russia. However, it isn't easy to calculate the number accurately due to the occupation of part of the territory of Ukraine.