Lubinets told international partners about the deportation of children from Kherson region: they are sent to re-education camps

Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Russia has illegally abducted more than 20,000 Ukrainian children. Currently, there is a risk of deportation for another 1.5 million children who are in the temporarily occupied territories.

This was announced by the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, at the third plenary event of the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children.

According to him, the occupiers change the personal data of forcibly displaced and deported children so that their relatives and Ukraine cannot find and return them.

«Our children are even sent to so-called re-education camps, where they are bombarded with Russian propaganda. Just imagine: our children are forced to deny their Ukrainian origin,» Dmytro Lubinets emphasized.

The ombudsman told international partners about the fate of residential institutions, such as the Oleshky Children's Boarding Home, a communal facility of the Kherson Regional Council, where children were first moved to the occupied territories and then deported to Russia.

And the children from the Kherson regional children's home were generally deported to Russia and adopted without permission.

The Human Rights Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada emphasized that Ukraine knows the facts that Ukrainian orphans taken to the Russian Federation receive inadequate medical care and have substandard living conditions.

«Ukraine is independently engaged in the search and verification of the whereabouts of children, the search for their relatives and the involvement of family forms of education in this process. Also, our country is working on improving legal mechanisms and cooperation between state bodies to protect children's rights and return them,» the official said.

According to Dmytro Lubinets, two key resolutions were adopted, which are important steps in establishing internal processes aimed at the return of deported Ukrainian children, as well as ensuring their rights after return.

The Ombudsman emphasized that the main problem now is that the Russian Federation is deliberately slowing down the process of returning children.

«For Ukraine, international support is vital, so I called on all our partners to continue working together and increase pressure on Russia. Her actions should be recognized as an international crime, and all those involved in the abduction of Ukrainian children should be brought to justice,» Dmytro Lubinets added.

It will be recalled that the head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, said that the EU will help return Ukrainian children deported by Russia.

Earlier, in an interview with Latin American media, Olena Zelenska said that the international coalition for the return of Ukrainian children already includes 37 countries, Argentina recently joined it.

Also, the vice-president of the European Parliament, Robert Zile, said that Russification, which took place during the Soviet era, was not as terrible as the one currently carried out by the Russian and Belarusian regimes, forcibly taking children from Ukrainian families and destroying their roots.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution calling on European politicians to make every effort to return Ukrainian children deported to Russia, as well as to help all children who are victims of this war.