From the temporarily occupied Kherson region to territory under Ukrainian control, four girls and three boys aged from 3 to 17 were returned.
This was reported by the head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration, Oleksandr Prokudin.
Among them – a seventeen-year-old young man whom the occupying authorities tried to add to the military registration lists.
“The so-called police repeatedly came to his home for checks, and the military commissioner openly threatened the mother with criminal charges. The boy’s brother was abducted after a neighbor’s denunciation and was brutally tortured in captivity,” – Prokudin noted.
In addition, it is reported that a 13-year-old girl was forced to hide at home to avoid being compelled to attend a Russian school. Her family, according to the OVA, regularly received threats about the possible removal of the child to an orphanage.
Now all the children are safe and are undergoing rehabilitation in Centers of Hope and Healing, where they receive psychological support, assistance with documents and necessary care.
The children were returned with the assistance of the charitable organization «Save Ukraine» as part of the President of Ukraine’s initiative Bring Kids Back UA.
Earlier it was reported that the Russian occupying authorities officially acknowledge the removal of hundreds of thousands of minors from the territory of Ukraine, and among the Russian political establishment a trend has formed toward their illegal adoption.