Journalists from The New York Times tracked how a whole network of officials and politicians connected to the party of Russian leader Vladimir Putin conducted a campaign to relocate Ukrainian children.
The article begins with how the Russian invasion was met by the Kherson Children’s Home, where the workers were thinking about how to get half a hundred children out. There were children with special needs – infants and children under five years old, some of them had serious disabilities, for example, cerebral palsy. They were not orphans, some of their parents had limited parental rights; some of the children were removed from dysfunctional families, and some were abandoned.
Under fire, the workers moved the children, their carts and mattresses to the concrete basement, which the director of the institution Olena Kornienko found on the Internet. They also brought food, medicine, electric pumps and feeding tubes for the sickest babies.
On the same day, the pastor of the local church learned about the plight of the Children’s House. He convinced the staff to take the children to his church, where he could at least provide them with warmth, light and food.
Their fears soon came true: on April 25, 2022, Russian officials found the children. They transported them almost 300 km from home, all the while filming the children for their propaganda videos.
Through social networks and the same propaganda videos, The New York Times journalists followed the movement of these children and analyzed a number of posts on Russian social networks. According to experts in the field of law, what happened to the children in the future may constitute a war crime.
Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin spoke about the murders, violence and torture of Ukrainian children by the Russian occupiers.
According to the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Dmytro Lubinets, more than 19,500 children were taken out of Ukraine by the Russians.