Human rights defenders took about 6,000 children from the occupied territories of Ukraine to Crimea

About 6,000 children were brought to the annexed Crimea from the occupied territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhіa and Kherson regions.

Experts do not know how many of them were able to return to their place of residence, how many remained on the occupied peninsula, and how many were transported to Russian territory and Belarus. Maria Sulyalina, head of the “Almenda” civic education center, stated this at the OSCE Human Dimension Conference.

According to the human rights defender, today it was possible to identify about 20,000 children taken to Russian territory from Ukraine. Programs to destroy their national identity are applied to these children, and they are also convinced that within the framework of a “special operation” (as Russia calls the war with Ukraine), the Russian military is liberating Ukraine.

The expert also drew attention to the fact that neither national nor international mechanisms for the return of Ukrainian children to their country have been developed to date. “It should be done right now. Time is working against us,” Maria Sulyalina stressed.