The recent news of Ukrainian children allegedly being deported from Belarus has shocked the world. These children, who had been enjoying a summer camp, were allegedly taken across the border to Ukraine and left without their parents or guardians. While the Belarusian government denies any wrongdoing, Ukrainian officials have been working to bring the children back home. The emotional journey was described by one official as “heartbreaking,” leaving many wondering about the fate of the children and the larger implications of such actions. This article will delve into the details of this ordeal and explore the effects it has had on those involved.
After a long and complex rescue mission involving travel across four countries, more than 30 children have been reunited with their families in Ukraine. The children had been taken from areas occupied by Russian forces during the war and taken to Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea. Mothers hugged their sons and daughters as they crossed the border from Belarus into Ukraine on Friday. Nearly 19,500 children have been taken to Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea since Moscow invaded in February last year, in what Ukraine condemns as illegal deportations. Moscow denies abducting children and says they have been transported away for their own safety.
Dasha Rakk, a 13-year-old girl, said she and her twin sister agreed to leave the Russian-occupied city of Kherson last year due to the war and go to a holiday camp in Crimea for a few weeks. However, once in Crimea, Russian officials said the children would be staying for longer. “They said we will be adopted, that we will get guardians,” she said. “When they first told us we will stay longer, we all started crying.” Dasha’s mother Natalia said she had travelled from Ukraine to Crimea via Poland, Belarus and Moscow to get her daughters. Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula has been occupied by Russia since 2014.
Mykola Kuleba, the founder of the Save Ukraine humanitarian organisation that helped arrange the rescue mission, said: “Now the fifth rescue mission is nearing its completion. It was special regarding the number of children we managed to return and also because of its complexity.” Kuleba told a briefing in Kyiv that all 31 children brought home said no one in Russia was trying to find their parents.
“There were kids who changed their locations five times in five months, some children say that they were living with rats and cockroaches,” he said. The children were taken to what Russians called stays in summer camps from occupied parts of Ukraine’s Kharkiv and Kherson regions.
Three children – two boys and a girl – were present at the media briefing in Kyiv. Save Ukraine said they came home on a previous mission last month that returned 18 children in total. The three said they had been separated from their parents, who were pressured by Russian authorities to send their children to Russian summer camps for what was billed as two weeks, from occupied parts of Kherson and Kharkiv regions. The children at the briefing said they were forced to remain at the summer camps for four to six months and were moved from one place to another during their stay.
The International Criminal Court last month issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, accusing them of abducting children from Ukraine. Moscow has not concealed a programme under which it has taken thousands of Ukrainian children from occupied areas, but presents it as a humanitarian campaign to protect orphans and children abandoned in the conflict zone.
Russia rejects the ICC allegations, saying it does not recognise the court’s jurisdiction and calling the warrants null and void. Lvova-Belova said earlier this week that her commission acted on humanitarian grounds to protect the interests of children in an area where military action was taking place and had not moved anyone against their will or the will of their parents or legal guardians, whose consent was always sought unless they were missing. Kateryna Rashevska, a lawyer from a Ukrainian NGO called Regional Centre for Human Rights, told the briefing they were collecting evidence to build a case that Russian officials deliberately prevented the return of Ukrainian children.
“In every story, there is a whole range of international violations and it cannot go unpunished,” she said.
