Ukraine returns two more abducted children and makes progress in saving teenager from Mariupol
Фото: Telegram / Андрій Єрмак
The Bring Kids Back UA initiative, founded by Ukraine's President, brought two more children back home. Both came with their grandmother.
Ukraine is also making progress in returning 17-year-old Bohdan Yermokhin, who was taken from now-occupied Mariupol by the Russian military in 2022, to the government-controlled territory.
Yegor and Valeria, born in 2009 and 2015, were born in Crimea and raised by their grandmother after their father died and their mother was deprived of parental rights. She decided to leave Crimea with the children after the proxy authorities pushed people with pro-Ukrainian views amid the start of the full-scale war.
"Our team helped them to go to Ukraine (to the territory controlled by Ukraine – ed.), we developed a legend that the family used in contacts with representatives of the occupation authorities and special services of the aggressor country," said the head of the Presidential Office Andrii Yermak.
On November 9, head of Kherson military administration Oleksandr Prokudin reported three more children had been returned to Ukraine-controlled territory.
This became possible with the tremendous work of many services, such as the Office of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, the Ministry of Reintegration, etc.
Parents and children are now working with psychologists and receiving the necessary medical care. As for now, 146 children from the Kherson region have been returned since the beginning of 2023.
Ukraine currently has great progress in returning 17-year-old Bohdan Yermokhin, whom Russian forces abducted in 2022.
"Bohdan Yermokhin will be in Ukraine soon! I officially confirm that we have agreements on his return to Ukraine and his reunion with his sister," Lubinets wrote.
He also published Bohdan's statement to the city district in Moscow region, in which he refused to rent an apartment "due to his departure to Ukraine."
Адвокатка хлопця Катерина Бобровська розповіла, що Богдана у травні 2022 року російські військові вивезли з окупованого Маріуполя разом із 30 іншими дітьми та помістили в російську родину під опіку.
16-year-old Bohdan Yermokhin from Mariupol ended up in a children's sanatorium near Moscow. In July 2022, he was placed under the care of Iryna Rudnitskaya, a Russian citizen and veteran of one of the Chechen wars. After that, he contacted a lawyer and asked her to help him.
Bohdan will turn 18 on 19 November. He already received a summons to report to the Moscow region enlistment office on 19 December 2023.
Maria Lvova-Belova (the Russian President's Commissioner for Children's Rights) assured the day before that the boy would be returned home as early as next week.
As of November 10, Ukraine confirmed the illegal abduction of 19,546 children. On March 17, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Children's Commissioner Maria Levova-Belova. In July 2023, the Office of the Prosecutor General launched an investigation into the involvement of the Belarusian Red Cross in the deportation of Ukrainian children.
Ukraine's Children's Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets says 386 children were adopted and put in various Russian families.
Canadian representatives proposed creating a coalition of countries to facilitate the return of Ukrainian children deported by Russia at a meeting of national security and foreign policy advisers.
