Ukraine repatriates six more children from occupied territories

Five more families, with a total of 6 children ranging in age from 3 to 17, have been repatriated to Ukraine from the temporarily held territories. These families departed from the occupied Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Crimea areas.

The Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, and the head of the President's Office, Andrii Yermak, reported that.

"As part of the implementation of the approved action plan of the President of Ukraine Bring Kids Back UA, five families with six children were able to leave the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine," the ombudsman informs.

Ukrainian officials said that children under occupation were forced to study in Russian schools, where a large part of the program contained propaganda. The parents were forced to obtain Russian passports, without which it was impossible to move through the temporarily occupied territories (TOT) of Ukraine.

"If they refused [to go to Russian schools], their parents faced blackmail threats, such as losing their parental rights, and were subjected to illegal searches and interrogations," Yermak writes.

Lubinets adds that children were enrolled in the military organizations of the Russian Federation without the consent of their parents and themselves. Families also experienced psychological pressure, lack of proper medical care, and supply of necessary medicines.

Currently, the families will reside in the Ivano-Frankivsk, Cherkasy, Lviv, and Zhytomyr regions. The Human Rights Commissioner has pledged to assist them with finding housing, completing necessary paperwork, finding employment, and enrolling their children in school. The state has also provided financial and humanitarian aid to the children.

For reference:

At the end of October last year, at a meeting of advisers on national security and foreign policy, Canadian representatives proposed to create a coalition of countries that would facilitate the return of Ukrainian children deported by the aggressor country.

Japan joined the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children.

Also, the United States of America has officially become a member state of the coalition, which advocates the safe return to Ukraine of children illegally deported and displaced by the Russian Federation during the war.

It should be noted that the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children already includes 37 countries, and recently, Argentina also joined it.