Ukrainian children deported to Russia tell of life in “re-education camps”

A black minibus with tinted windows parks in a parking lot in a suburb of kyiv. The side door slides open and 17 children come out one by one. This scene took place on Wednesday March 22. It is about the return to their parents of some of the children “deported” from Ukraine to Russia. Kidnappings which also earned Vladimir Putin an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for “illegal deportation”.

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For the return of these children to the arms of their loved ones, we can see huge smiles on their faces, intense hugs, and a few tears of joy too. Denys has just found three of these four children: the two big Diana and Yana, 14 and 11 years old, and the youngest, Nikita, 10 years old, who wears a yellow and blue tracksuit in the colors of Ukraine. “I am very happy, the children are safe and sound, they are smiling and, above all, they are alive!” Denys is moved.

A summer camp

The families then entered a red brick building, and over a snack, tongues were loosened. These families tell almost the same story: that of children sent to summer camp for two weeks and who never returned. It is the same scenario for 15 of these 17 children, originating from the region of Kherson, in the south of the country, then occupied by the Russians. They left voluntarily on a Friday evening, October 7, the first day of All Saints’ Day, towards Yevpatoria, in the west of Crimea, for a summer camp by the sea.

The parents let themselves be convinced by the new local authorities, because the area is constantly bombed. The Ukrainian counter-offensive is close to completion. So they decide to take their children to safety. Fifteen days later, the stay comes to an end, but the children do not return, according to an order from the military administration explains the school.

“They confiscated our phones and then told us that our parents didn’t need us, that they had abandoned us. But that obviously wasn’t true.”

Vitali, a young Ukrainian boy deported to Russia

at franceinfo

For nearly six months, for Vitali, 16, the summer camp becomes a “re-education camp”. “When we woke up, they made us line up to sing the Russian anthemdescribes the young man back in Ukraine. Many of us didn’t want to. We were hiding behind each other. A girl had a Ukrainian flag in her room, and Astakhov, the security manager, saw it and burned it. He said, ‘Look, come see how we’re setting fire to your country’.”

“I repeated to him that I was his mother”

Vitali also recounts moral bullying: “They then rounded us up as Ukrainians and told us that we come from a terrorist nation that kills people, children, that Ukraine does not need us. We were also made to wear ribbons of Saint -George, the symbol of Russian patriotism.”

Listening to the story of her eldest, mother Inessa, surrounded by her 3 other boys, cannot help but blame herself. “It was the school principal who sent them to summer camp. She went door to door and texted us regularlysays the mother. She put so much pressure on us that I asked my son if he wanted to leave. He replied that everyone was going, so he was too. Then, I regularly called the person in charge of the summer camp. She pretended not to know who I was. She asked me questions about what I could give my son in Beryslav, near Kherson, while there was shelling, while there everything is fine. I repeated to him that I was his mother and I insisted: what did I have to do to prove it? She replied that no one will give us back our children. In any case, they knew very well that we could not access the area.”

16,000 missing children

It is thanks to the NGO “Save Ukraine” that these parents were able to prove their identity and recover their children. She thus carried out her fourth repatriation convoy since the beginning of the war. The association first contacts the Russian authorities and then helps the parents to set up a file, with the passport, the family record book, proof of address. When everything is ready, they hit the road together, by bus.

Bypassing the front lines from Kherson to Yevpatoria, as the crow flies, there are about 200 kilometers, Jeanna makes more than 3,500 to pick up her daughter Masha. She describes her journey: “We left Kiev by train to Chelm in Poland. We then took a first bus to the border with Belarus and then another to Minsk. We boarded the plane, heading for Domodedovo airport in Moscow.” Once they arrived in Russia, they were “blocked for 9 hours, interrogated, the Russians searched our phones, they asked us absurd questions: where were our children, why we had left them, if we had contacts in the Ukrainian army. We were then able to leave Moscow for Yevpatoria two days away. They signed the papers and said to us: Here, take your children and leave!

Masha and Vitali are among the 300 repatriated minors, according to the Ukrainian authorities. This corresponds to a drop of water since there would be 50 times more. kyiv counted 16,226 exactly today in Russia or in the occupied territories.