Russia has removed over 700,000 Ukrainian children from temporarily occupied territories

Since the start of the full-scale war, Russia has removed at least 744,000 children from the occupied Ukrainian territories. This was stated by the head of the Bring Kids Back UA initiative, Dariya Zaryvna, Espresso.

Most of them were taken away together with their parents, but the exact fate of these families remains unknown," she said.

According to her, although Ukraine has this information, it cannot confirm or deny these figures.

Russia has completely blocked access to the information - neither Ukrainian bodies nor international structures are given information about the displaced children," she said.

According to her, after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Putin and Lvova-Belova for illegal deportation, Moscow stopped any public information altogether.

That's 744,000 children's fates uprooted from their normal lives. Some of them may never return home. And the longer we don't know what happens to them, the higher the risk that Russia will rewrite their stories," Zarivna emphasised.

She stressed that it is impossible to say exactly how many children died in the WOT during the war or were separated from their parents after February 2022, especially considering those who were born after the invasion began.

To date, Ukraine has officially documented at least 19,546 cases of forced deportation or displacement of children. But the real number is undoubtedly much higher. Russia deliberately hides the data by not giving access to the information, making it impossible to fully assess the scale of the tragedy. Despite this, the Bring Kids Back UA initiative has already managed to return 1,269 children home - 449 of them over the last year and 18 in March this year alone," Zarivna emphasised.