During negotiations in Istanbul, the Ukrainian delegation officially handed over to representatives of the Russian Federation a list of children that need to be returned to their homeland. According to Andriy Yermak, head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, this concerns hundreds of Ukrainian children who have been illegally deported, forcibly displaced, or are being held in temporarily occupied territories.
This is reported by Kyiv24
“Today, during the negotiations in Istanbul, the Ukrainian side officially submitted to the Russian side a list of Ukrainian children that need to be returned. This concerns hundreds of children that Russia has illegally deported, forcibly displaced, or is holding in temporarily occupied territories,” he wrote on Telegram.
Negotiations and Positions of the Parties
Andriy Yermak also reminded that back in March, at a meeting in Jeddah, Ukraine confirmed its readiness for a 30-day ceasefire with a humanitarian component. He emphasized that the return of children is an inseparable part of a just and lasting peace, as well as a key element of trust between the parties. According to Yermak, this is the first test of the sincerity of the Russian side’s intentions, and now “the ball is in Russia’s court.”
In turn, the head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, stated that Moscow received a list from Kyiv of 339 children for return. At the same time, he attempted to discredit the actions of the Ukrainian side, accusing Kyiv of creating a “show for sympathetic Europeans” regarding the issue of children. Medinsky also denied the existence of abducted children, claiming that all of them were allegedly “rescued by Russian soldiers from the combat zone.”
Scale of Deportations and International Reaction
According to official data from Ukraine, over 20,000 Ukrainian children have been in Russia and temporarily occupied territories since the beginning of the full-scale war. Meanwhile, the Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, believes that the actual number of illegally transported children may reach around 150,000. According to the Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada for Children’s Rights, Daria Gerasimchuk, this concerns several hundred thousand children – approximately between 200,000 and 300,000.
In March 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued arrest warrants for the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, and the Russian Children’s Ombudsman, Maria Lvova-Belova. They are suspected of committing war crimes, specifically of forced deportations and the displacement of populations, including children, from the occupied territories of Ukraine.
The Russian Children’s Ombudsman, Maria Lvova-Belova, reported in July 2023 that since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Russia has “accepted” about 4.8 million residents of Ukraine, among whom over 700,000 are children. According to her claims, most of them arrived in Russia with their parents or other relatives.
Read also: How Save Ukraine is Restoring Stolen Childhood: The Path to Recovery After Deportation