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4 Ukrainian children return home from Russian-occupied territories

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4 Ukrainian children return home from Russian-occupied territories
Photo for illustrative purposes. A little boy and girl stand by a woman as people from the Kupiansk community arrive at an evacuation point in Kharkiv on Oct. 17, 2024. The government ordered mandatory evacuations from four communities in Kharkiv Oblast due to increasing hostilities. (Ukrinform/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Ukraine successfully returned four children from the Russian-occupied part of Kherson Oblast thanks to the "Bring Kids Back UA" initiative as well as "Save Ukraine," Kherson Oblast Governor Oleksandr Prokudin announced on Dec. 31.

These include two boys and two girls, aged between 3 and 17. "A true New Year's miracle!" Prokudin said in his statement, adding that "each of them has endured experiences no child should ever face: Russian terror, threats, and interrogations of their relatives."

Since February 2022, at least 20,000 Ukrainian children have been abducted from Russian-occupied territories and sent to other Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine or to Russia itself, according to a Ukrainian national database, "Children of War."

The Ukrainian Parliament’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, estimates that Russia has unlawfully deported up to 150,000 Ukrainian children, while the Children’s Ombudswoman, Daria Herasymchuk, puts the figure at 200,000–300,000.

Since the beginning of 2024, at least 246 children native to Kherson Oblast have been returned from Russian occupation, Prokudin said.

A Yale School of Public Health study published on Dec. 3 detailed Russia's systematic program of deporting and forcibly assimilating Ukrainian children.

Under orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin, children were transported via military aircraft in 2022, reclassified in Russian databases as native-born, and subjected to pro-Russian re-education before being adopted into Russian families. Ukrainian children had been transported to at least 21 regions throughout Russia.

Ukraine names pro-Russian collaborators suspected of forcibly deporting Ukrainian children
One suspect was identified by the Kyiv Independent’s War Crimes Investigations Unit in the documentary “Uprooted.”
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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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