Ukraine managed to bring home a 12-year-old boy. In the temporarily occupied Kherson region, the child lived with his grandmother because his mother died in the summer of 2022.
Another child was brought home
12-year-old Andriy was returned from the temporarily occupied Kherson region. As noted, the child's older sister appealed to the Office of the Ombudsman with a request to take him out of the occupation.
During the occupation, they experienced all the "advantages of the Russian world": intimidation, psychological pressure, visits by representatives of the occupation authorities, Dmytro Lubinets said.
The boy was threatened to be taken away from his grandmother and placed in an orphanage, as he was left without a legal representative.
On January 1, 2024, they finally found themselves in the territory controlled by Ukraine. So, the first day of the new year symbolically became the first day of a new life for this family.
The return was achieved through the joint efforts of the Ombudsman's Office and the "Ukrainian Network for Children's Rights".
What is known about the abduction of Ukrainian children
For Children's Day in 2023, the Online.UA team presented the documentary project "Abducted Childhood", which tells the story of Ukrainian children forcibly deported and abducted to Russia.
In the "Abducted Childhood" film, children and their parents openly share their own stories: some of them were in captivity, some were forcibly taken to a "rehabilitation camp", and some were separated from their parents during the so-called filtering measures.
It is essential to understand that during more than a year and a half of full-scale war, Ukraine was able to return less than 400 children. At the same time, Russia claims to have "evacuated" 744,000 Ukrainian children.
Since diplomacy with the aggressor country does not work, Russia continues to remove children from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine illegally.
However, this is not an evacuation, as the Russians claim, but a mass abducting of Ukrainian minor citizens.
The project documents children's testimonies about war crimes committed by the Russian Federation against the Ukrainian people.
