Empty Beds art installation debuts in New York as touching tribute to Ukrainian children abducted by Russia

In the United States, the Empty Beds art installation commemorating Ukrainian children deported by Russia was unveiled on one of the central streets of Manhattan in New York.

Head of the President's Office, Andrii Yermak, announced this on Telegram.

According to him, the Empty Beds installation is a thirty-meter mural with photos of empty children's beds. They belong to children whom Ukraine managed to bring home.

Every photo reveals the true tale of a Ukrainian child, representing the thousands more who have been unlawfully deported by the Russian Federation and still face the same fate every single day.

"The enemy's primary objective is to eliminate the Ukrainian identity of children and mold them into adversaries of their own nation. They coerce them into renouncing their Ukrainian citizenship, forcibly issue them Russian passports, insist on their attendance at Russian schools, and use the deprivation of parental rights as a form of blackmail against families," Yermak said.

The mural was created by photographer Phil Bailer and the Bird of Light Ukraine organization as part of the Bring Kids Back UA initiative, with the participation of Save Ukraine and the Ukrainian Network for Children's Rights.

For reference:

As of October 26, since the beginning of the full-scale war, the Russian Federation has killed 583 children in Ukraine, and at least 1,655 more children have been injured.

It should be noted that since the beginning of Russia's large-scale military aggression against Ukraine, the aggressors have been constantly deporting Ukrainian children to Crimea, Belarus, or remote regions of Russia.

Earlier, it was reported that the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued a warrant for the arrest of dictator Vladimir Putin and the Commissioner for Children's Rights in the Russian Federation, Maria Lvova-Belova, due to the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children.

In addition, according to Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets, Russia illegally deported more than 19,000 Ukrainian children.

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.