Leaving a bus in kyiv, a 10-year-old boy jumps into his father’s arms. He is part of a group of 17 children returned, thanks to an NGO, from “deportation” to Russia or occupied Ukrainian territories.
Denys Zaporozhchenko had not seen his son, nor his two daughters on the bus, for six and a half months. All lived together in Kherson, in the occupied south of Ukraine when they were separated, he says, on October 7, a month before the reconquest of the city by the Ukrainian forces.
As terrible fighting loomed in Kherson with the Ukrainian counter-offensive, Mr. Zaporozhchenko claims to have agreed to send his children away from the war to “holiday camps” further south, in annexed Crimea.
The Russian officials of the school where his children were educated “had promised to send them for a week or two in this camp”, he continues. “But when we realized that we shouldn’t have done that, it was too late. »
He specifies that he was able to exchange with his three children by telephone during these long months of separation.
For Ukraine, these children, like some 16,000 others at least, were “kidnapped” by the Russians. Moscow denies it, boasting of having “saved” them from the war and of having put in place procedures to reunite them with their families.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a historic arrest warrant last week against Vladimir Putin, considering that he was presumed responsible for the “war crime of illegal deportation” of minors.
According to official figures from the Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office dated Thursday, 16,226 children have been deported since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Since that date, 465 children have died, 940 have been injured and 395 are missing as a result of the conflict.
“Intimidation and Blackmail”
Myroslava Khartchenko, a lawyer for the NGO Save Ukraine which organized the repatriation of the 17 children, says the Russian authorities used “intimidation, manipulation and blackmail” to seize the toddlers.
“They tell (the parents) that they have an hour to think and that if the Ukrainians come, they will bring American mercenaries who will ‘beat you and rape you and that this is your only chance to save your children’”.
The NGO responds to the requests of desperate parents who have not succeeded in recovering their children, faced with the refusal of the Russian administration.
Without the help of governmental or international organizations, in the absence of a diplomatic agreement between kyiv and Moscow, the NGO must comply with administrative procedures put in place by the Russians for each repatriation.
For the first time, the association succeeded in organizing a group return to Ukraine. She chartered a bus, taking some of the mothers on board, which made a very long detour via Poland, Belarus, Russia and then Crimea, for lack of authorization to cross the front line in the southern Ukrainian.
Political re-education
Several children, interviewed by AFP on Wednesday, say they have not suffered ill-treatment, but tell of a form of political education to convert them to the discourse of the Kremlin.
“If you didn’t sing the (Russian) national anthem, they made you write explanatory notes. And at New Year’s, they showed us (the speech of) Putin, ”says Taïssia Volynska, 15, from Kherson.
Yana Zaporozhchenko, Dionysius’ 11-year-old daughter, says there were “a lot” of inspections by Russian officials at her camp. “They asked us to sing and dance when there were inspections,” says the young girl.
Inessa Vertoch, 43, who waited for her son “day after day”, says she found him “more serious”. “He looks at me and says to me: ‘Mom, I don’t want to tell you, you wouldn’t sleep at night'”.
Myroslava Khartchenko, from Save Ukraine, assures that psychologists will take care of each of these children.
And she urges parents not to return to live in “dangerous areas”.