At least 1,000 Ukrainian children were seized from schools and orphanages in the Kherson region during Russia’s occupation, their whereabouts unknown. But even more orphans would have been taken had it not been for those who hid as many as they could.
On the outskirts of Kherson in the village of Stepanivka, Volodymyr Sahaidak the director of a center for social and psychological rehabilitation, was also falsifying paperwork to hide 52 orphaned and vulnerable children. The 61-year-old placed some of the children with seven of his staff, others were taken to distant relatives and some of the older ones remained with him, he said. “It seemed that if I did not hide my children they would simply be taken away from me,” he said.
“A bus came with the inscription Z and they were taken away,” said Anastasiia Kovalenko, who lives nearby.At the start of the invasion, a local aid group tried to hide the children in a church but the Russians found them several months later, returned them to the orphanage and then evacuated them, said locals.that Russia is trying to give thousands of Ukrainian children to Russian families for foster care or adoption.
Russian authorities have repeatedly said that moving children to Russia is intended to protect them from hostilities. The Russian Foreign Ministry has rejected the claims that the country is seizing and deporting the children. It has noted that the authorities are searching for relatives of parentless children left in Ukraine to find opportunities to send them home when possible.
Local and national security and law enforcement are looking for the children who were moved but they still don’t know what happened to them, said Galina Lugova, head of Kherson’s military administration. “We do not know the fate of these children … we do not know where the children from orphanages or from our educational institutions are, and this is a problem,” she said.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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