Thirty-one Ukrainian children taken from Russian-occupied territory during the war were reunited last weekend with their families following a long rescue operation to bring them home from Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea, Archyde.com and CNN reported. , but a grandmother died during the rescue and might not save her grandson.
After trekking across four countries and completing complex rescue missions, mothers hugged their children tightly and crossed the border from Belarus into Ukraine on the 7th.
Dasha Rakk, 13, said she and her twin sister agreed last year to leave the Russian-occupied city of Kherson for a few weeks at a holiday camp in Crimea because of the war. But once they arrive in Crimea, Russian officials say the children will stay longer in Crimea.
“They said we would be adopted, we would get guardians, and when they first told us we would stay longer, we all cried,” she said.
Dasha’s mother, Natalia, said she traveled from Ukraine to Crimea via Poland, Belarus and Moscow to pick up her daughter. Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula has been occupied by Russia since 2014.
“It was very difficult, but we kept going, we didn’t sleep at night, we slept sitting up,” she said, describing the journey.
“It is heartbreaking to watch the children who are left behind, crying behind the fence,” she said.
“We go to summer camp for two weeks, but we’re stuck there for six months,” said Bogdan, 13. “I cried when I saw my mum from the bus,” he said, holding his mother. I’m happy to be back.”
The Ukrainian government estimates that nearly 19,500 children have been taken to Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea since the Russian invasion last February, and denounces the deportations as illegal.
Moscow, which controls large swaths of eastern and southern Ukraine, has denied abducting the children, saying it was being sent away for their safety.
Mykola Kuleba, founder of the “Save Ukraine” humanitarian organization that helped arrange the rescue mission, said at a briefing in Kiev on the 8th, “Now the fifth rescue mission is regarding to be completed, as far as we managed to send back This is unique in terms of the number of children and the complexity of the process”.
All 31 children who were brought home said that no one in Russia tried to find their parents, he said. “Some children changed residences five times in five months, and some children said they lived with rats and cockroaches”.
Kuleba said the children were brought to the camp from the Russian-occupied regions of Kharkov and Khson in Ukraine.
A grandmother who went with the group to save the children died en route, he said. The grandmother went to pick up her two grandchildren, who were not allowed to return to Ukraine because of her death.
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