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4 Ukrainian children return home from Russian-occupied parts of Kherson Oblast

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4 Ukrainian children return home from Russian-occupied parts of Kherson Oblast
Photo for illustrative purposes. Children take part in preschool classes at the metro station of Svobody Square near the Kharkiv Regional Administration building on Feb. 17, 2024, in Kharkiv, Ukraine. (Diego Fedele/Getty Images) 

Four children returned home from Russian-occupied parts of Kherson Oblast, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on Nov. 15.

"Thanks to the efforts of the charity organization 'Save Ukraine,' the children are back," the governor reported via his official Telegram channel. "They are safe and receiving the necessary medical and psychological help to recover from what they've experienced under Russian occupation."

Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, Moscow has abducted Ukrainian children from occupied territories and forcibly transferred them within the occupied territories or to Russia itself. According to the Ukrainian government’s database, Russia has illegally abducted over 19,500 children since February 2022, and less than 390 have returned home thus far.

In a statement released on Nov. 15, Prokudin said the children who returned home include four boys, aged between 1.7 and 17. Prokudin said that since the beginning of 2024, at least 229 children from occupied parts of Kherson Oblast have been returned to Ukraine.

Taking hostage people who take no active part in hostilities breaches the Geneva Conventions and constitutes a war crime.

Around 1.5 million Ukrainian children who remain in occupied areas of Ukraine are at high risk of being deported to Russia, Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said on Oct. 2. According to the Ombudsman's Office, those from children's homes in Kherson Oblast were first moved to the occupied territories and then deported to Russia.

Canada allocates over $7 million for return, reintegration of Ukrainian children
The funds will be directly transferred to UNICEF in Ukraine, Ukraine’s Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said on Aug. 21. Canada will also allocate funds to international organizations providing services to Ukrainian children.
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Olena Goncharova

Head of North America desk

Olena Goncharova is the Head of North America desk at The Kyiv Independent, where she has previously worked as a development manager and Canadian correspondent. She first joined the Kyiv Post, Ukraine's oldest English-language newspaper, as a staff writer in January 2012 and became the newspaper’s Canadian correspondent in June 2018. She is based in Edmonton, Alberta. Olena has a master’s degree in publishing and editing from the Institute of Journalism in Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv. Olena was a 2016 Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellow who worked for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for six months. The program is administered by the University of Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia.

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