31 children abducted by Russia from occupied territories returned to Ukraine

Ukraine has managed to return 31 more children taken to Russia. This was reported by the director of Save Ukraine, the presidential commissioner for children's rights (2014-2021), Mykola Kuleba.

According to him, the children will already be in Kiev in a few hours.

He also said that there should have been more children returned.

Unfortunately, the grandmother who was supposed to pick up the two children died during this mission," he told a press conference.

According to Kuleba, because of this, not 33 children were returned to Ukraine as planned, but 31. He specified that it would be necessary to return the body of this woman to Ukraine and the children she was supposed to take.

Kuleba also added that with each rescue mission, "the number of hours of questioning by the FSB, the trials that families go through to get their children back increases.

Therefore, it is not surprising that the grandmother's heart stopped," he said.

Kuleba said that the Russians did not allow parents and legal representatives to enter the camp where the Ukrainian children were held immediately.

They kept them behind the fence and one by one the parents were let into the facility where cameras were installed. They pressured the parents to thank the Russian Federation for preserving their children before taking them away," Kuleba said.

He stressed that the Russians who took the Ukrainian children to their territory did nothing to find their parents.

We searched for these children, and it was very difficult because there are children where 5 different places of stay were changed in 5 months - they were thrown from one camp to another. There are a lot of evidences of what was happening to these children there", - said Executive Director of "Save Ukraine".

Kuleba informed that since 2014, Russia has kidnapped 1.5 million Ukrainian children.

This is almost 20 per cent of the child population - here we are talking about Crimea, Donbas, occupied territories of other regions. And these are children who are hostages who, unfortunately, cannot return to Ukraine today for various reasons," Kuleba concluded.