The Press in Ukraine | Save the children, at all costs

They are the stolen children of Ukraine. They are at least 13,000, forcibly transferred to Russia since the start of the war. There, they are transformed into good little Russians. And they would be even more numerous, if not for the courage of Ukrainians who risked everything in the occupied territories to hide orphans.

The children had learned their story by heart. If they were asked questions, they would say that they had come from a bombed-out village at the front and that they had taken refuge with their aunt Halyna in the occupied city of Kherson.

They had instructions to follow: it was forbidden to speak to strangers and to stay away from their “aunt”, even if only a few meters. Above all, never talk about the rehabilitation center. To no one.

The stakes were enormous. If discovered, these children would be taken away from everything they had known to be transformed into good little Russians.

They would be stripped of their identity, their language, their culture. Indoctrinated. Rescheduled. Like thousands of other children abducted since the start of the war in Ukraine.

It was mid-October. The establishment whose name they absolutely had to conceal was the Center for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation for Children in Stepanivka, on the outskirts of Kherson.

Russian forces, anticipating their withdrawal from this major city in southern Ukraine, were determined to take children with them. Many children.

Roundups followed one another in orphanages and other children’s establishments in Kherson. On October 19, 15 residents of the Rehabilitation Center were forcibly transferred to Russia.

The others now risked the same fate. So the employees of the center came up with a secret plan to keep them in Ukraine.

At the start of the war, 52 children were housed in the Rehabilitation Centre, says its director, Volodymyr Sahaidak. Among them were a few orphans, but mostly children in state care; the establishment was the Ukrainian equivalent of a youth centre.

“During the first three months of the war, we hoped that the Ukrainian government would evacuate us to a safer place. But the risks were too great. “When I understood that there would be no evacuation, I knew what had to be done. »

We had to hide the children.

Volodymyr Sahaidak knew that Russia would seek to take them. This is what she had been doing since 2014 in the occupied territories of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts.

The director managed to place most of the boarders in the care of family members. But some had nowhere to go. Seventeen children had been able to hide in disaster, on October 19, when Russian representatives had come to seek 15 of their comrades.

After this roundup, they could no longer stay in the center. It was too dangerous.

So, on October 20, the employees agreed to divide up the 17 children and take them home, inventing this story of nephews and nieces who had survived the front for the neighbors who were too curious.

Everything happened so fast. Halyna Kulakovska took three children to her apartment in central Kherson. “I didn’t have time to think about it,” she says. It wasn’t until I did that that I started to realize the consequences it could have, if I got caught. »

Aunt Halyna, it was her.

Oksana Koval secretly housed children aged 3, 8 and 9. “Before meeting people in the street, I reminded them: I am Aunt Oksana. At the park, the children sometimes forgot the instructions. Enthralled by their games, they addressed their educator as they had always done: “Madame Oksana! Madam Oksana! »

The educator’s blood froze. “Hush! Hush! It’s Aunt Oksana,” she scolded them in a low voice.

Another employee, who cannot be named for security reasons, took five children to her home. The ten kilometers that separated Stepanivka and the center of Kherson had two road checks. “At the first checkpoint, things went well,” says Volodymyr Sahaidak. In the second, the soldiers were more suspicious. »

“Who are these children? Where do you take them? asked a soldier to the employee. He ordered her out of the car, while another soldier questioned the oldest child. ” Who are you ? Where are your parents ? The teenager played the game; she had learned her part well.

The soldiers let them pass.

“Every day was terrifying,” says Halyna Kulakovska. Near my house, there was a building where Russians lived. Their police station wasn’t far either. They were everywhere, like cockroaches. »

Why expose yourself to such danger? “These are our children,” replies Volodymyr Sahaidak. What the Russians are doing is a crime. There is no worse crime than stealing children. »

46 toddlers stolen

Behind the padlocked gate, an abandoned playground. There are no more kids to play in the courtyard of the red-roofed building in northern Kherson. Once lively, this foster home for children aged 0 to 3 is completely deserted.

“They came with buses and they took all the children,” says an old woman living in the building opposite, who refuses to name herself.

The raid, filmed, took place on October 21. In the video, toddlers are transported aboard a bus marked with the letter Z, a symbol of the Russian occupier. A high-ranking officer kisses a baby. Relieved to save him from the bombs – and from the Ukraine.

That day, 46 toddlers were transferred to Simferopol, in occupied Crimea. They can now be adopted by Russian couples: in May, Vladimir Putin signed a decree allowing the accelerated adoption of children considered orphans in Ukraine.

At least 13,000 children have been transferred to Russia since the start of the war, according to Ukrainian authorities. Of this number, 1000 were kidnapped in Kherson.

There would have been more, but for the courage of citizens who risked everything to keep them in Ukraine.

On October 21, the occupation government asked the staff of the Kherson Children’s Hospital to prepare a list of patients to be evacuated. “We prepared a plan in five minutes to prevent this,” says Olga Pilarska, head of the department of anesthesiology and intensive care.

The plan was simple, but daring: falsify the records of young patients.

Bleeding from the lungs, uncontrollable convulsions, postoperative complications… on paper, the orphans entrusted to the care of the hospital suddenly became extremely ill. Impossible to think of transporting them in this critical state.

“Of course it was dangerous, admits the D^D Pilarska. But we said to ourselves that we could not do otherwise; we had to save the children. »

The fate of the stolen children from Ukraine is unclear. The younger ones would be quickly adopted, gaining Russian citizenship, changing their name and even their place of birth. The most recalcitrant would be sent to re-education camps in Chechnya.

“These negative children insulted Putin and sang the Ukrainian anthem. After a few weeks, they expressed their love for Russia, ”rejoiced on her Telegram account Maria Lvova-Belova, charged by Moscow with supervising what she claims to be a humanitarian operation.

This deliberate policy of child abduction rather meets the definition of genocide, said the ombudsman for human rights of Ukraine, Dmitro Lubinets.

The practice, in any case, is not new. In its time, the Soviet regime deported Ukrainians to Siberia and Crimean Tatars to Uzbekistan, recalls Volodymyr Sahaidak. The Kremlin, he says, is proceeding as it always has. With a goal, or rather an obsession, in mind: “He just wants to eradicate the identity of the Ukrainian nation. »

Moscow repeats that it is evacuating children to ensure their safety. It’s not lacking in cynicism, considering that his troops relentlessly pound the towns and villages of Ukraine.

At the Kherson Children’s Hospital, anesthesiologist Stanislav Bumbu did not have time to celebrate the New Year. At midnight, December 31, he was preparing a blood transfusion for a teenager, victim of a bombardment in his village.

At midnight one, a mortar shell came crashing into the next room. The windows of the hospital were blown out. One of them crashed on the teenager.

Before the arrival of the firefighters, the D^r Bumbu put out the fire that had broken out upstairs. Then he got back to work.

Despite the liberation of Kherson on November 11, the Stepanivka Rehabilitation Center remained closed. On December 9, the children housed by the educators were evacuated to Mykolaiv, far from the front.

Two days later, a mortar shell hit the building next to Halyna Kulakovska’s.

The educator decided to stay, despite the bombs. “It is difficult to describe fear in times of war. You have to live it. My building is half empty. At night, I wake up thinking the Russians are coming for me. »

It is the memories of the occupation that give him nightmares, even more than the shells falling on Kherson. “If a bomb hits my building, I will die, but I will die free. »