Kidnapped children from Kherson orphanage ended up in occupied Crimea

The children of the Kherson Regional Children's Home, who were illegally taken by the Russian military during the occupation of the city in 2022, were transferred to foster families in the temporarily occupied Crimea.

This was reported by IPC-South.

According to representatives of the occupation authorities, out of 47 deported children, 42 children ended up in Crimean families, and five more remain in the Simferopol institution "Yolochka". It is known that all the children were under the age of 5 at the time of deportation, and some of them have complex diagnoses such as cerebral palsy or autism.

The Russian side is actively trying to hide the Ukrainian origin of the children. In the questionnaires of the federal data bank of the Russian Federation, the place of birth of the children is not indicated or is replaced by Crimea, which is actually an attempt to erase their national identity. Such actions, including the transfer of deported orphans to the families of citizens of the aggressor country, are qualified by international law as a war crime and a sign of genocide.

Ukrainian human rights activists emphasize that the replacement of data in documents and the transfer of children to the custody of the occupation significantly complicates the process of finding them and returning them home.

Tens of thousands of Ukrainian children are being abducted and forcibly taken to Russia to be deprived of their native identity. One of them was Mykyta, whom his grandmother was able to bring home after months of searching and fighting the occupation system.

On the eve of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, Mykyta was sent to an orphanage in Oleshky, Kherson region. The boy was about nine years old, had chronic stomach problems, and his grandmother Polina, who lived in Poland, took care of him.

In the fall of 2022, Russian soldiers surrounded the boarding school and took the children away. Mykyta was first sent to Crimea for rehabilitation, then to an orphanage in the Krasnodar Territory of Russia, and then to an unknown location. The new pro-Russian director of the orphanage said that the boy "has no family". Polina turned to the organization Save Ukraine, which helps to search for Ukrainian children abducted by Russian troops. Thanks to their support, Mykyta was found in occupied Skadovsk in southern Ukraine.

Катерина Глушко