Since February 2022, Russia has received about 4.8 million residents of Ukraine and Donbass, of which more than 700,000 people are children, said Maria Lvova-Belova, Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the report about their activities in the past year. Most of the children entered the country with their parents and other relatives, while some of those exported are orphans, the report says, figures from which led RBC.
About 1,500 pupils of institutions for children left without parental care and orphans arrived in Russia, the report says. 228 children from the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and 92 children from the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) were placed in foster families of Russian citizens. From April to October 2022, 380 children from the DPR and LPR left without parental care were placed in Russian foster families from 19 regions of the country.
In November 2022, 52 pupils of the Aleshka orphanage of the boarding school in the Kherson region with severe pathologies were transferred to the Crimea. According to Belova-Lvova, the boarding school was “in close proximity to the front line,” and on the safe territory of the Republic of Crimea, the children “were provided with everything necessary.”
Parents of children from Kherson, Zaporozhye, Kharkiv regions and other territories at the end of summer – autumn 2022, according to the report of the defender of the rights of the child, were sent on vacation, “including for protection from hostilities.” The speaker said that the children, along with the accompanying persons, were received by sanatoriums and rest homes in the Crimea and the Krasnodar Territory by proxy from their parents.
Saudi Arabia and Turkey mediated in secret negotiations on the return of Ukrainian children displaced to Russia after the start of its “special operation” * in Ukraine, reported in mid-July, the Financial Times, citing four sources familiar with the process. Billionaire Roman Abramovich is involved in the negotiations, according to two informed sources of the newspaper. According to FT sources, none of the parties centrally calculated how many Ukrainian children were transported to Russia. According to them, this assessment and the decision where to send these children is complicated by the fact that they were taken out under various circumstances.
“The challenge is to count all the children to figure out how many there are and then find the best solution for each child,” the source explained to the FT. Another factor complicating the negotiations is the different ways in which children arrive in Russia, the FT reported. In March, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin and Russian Children’s Ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova. The court decided that they were “responsible for a war crime related to the illegal deportation of the population (children)” from the territory of Ukraine to Russia.
Kremlin commented this decision, stating that he is calm about him, but fixes all “openly hostile manifestations.” In November 2022, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the Kremlin did not agree with comparing the “evacuation” of children from Ukraine with deportation. Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute and does not bear obligations under it, the Russian Foreign Ministry noted. “It’s great that the international community has appreciated the work to help the children of our country,” stated in March Lvov-Belov. In February, at a meeting with Putin, Lvova-Belova informedthat she herself adopted a 15-year-old child from Mariupol thanks to Putin.
* According to the requirement of Roskomnadzor, when preparing materials on a special operation in eastern Ukraine, all Russian media are obliged to use information only from official sources of the Russian Federation. We cannot publish materials in which the ongoing operation is called an “attack”, “invasion” or “declaration of war”, unless it is a direct quote (Article 57 of the Federal Law on the Media). In case of violation of the requirement, the media may be fined 5 million rubles, and the publication may also be blocked.
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2023-07-30 22:28:58
