Ukraine brings back children who were abducted to Russia from Mykolaiv Oblast

A group of children and teenagers who were abducted by Russian forces from a special school in Mykolaiv Oblast during its partial occupation have been brought back to Ukraine. Among them are orphans and children whose parents had been deprived of parental rights.

Source: Ukraine's Human Rights Commissioner Dmytro Lubinets; Bring Kids Back UA

Details: After the Russians occupied the town of Snihurivka, the headteacher of the Novopetrivka special school refused to "relocate" the institution to Crimea as the Russians demanded and attempted to evacuate the children to Ukrainian-controlled territory instead.

Bring Kids Back UA said: "When the occupiers discovered her efforts, they arrived with threats and an armed unit of the Rosgvardiya [Russian National Guard] in Tigr armoured vehicles. The children were forcibly transported – first to the left bank of Kherson Oblast, then through occupied Crimea, and later by train to the Russian city of Anapa."

Later, the children stayed temporarily in Georgia, where some of their teachers had fled with other students, and they lived there for more than three years.

Also back in Ukraine are a boy whose father was killed in action in Bakhmut, Donetsk Oblast, and another minor who managed to leave the temporarily occupied territory.

"Now they are home: all of them are remarkably united and full of faith in their country – in Ukraine [...]. Bringing Ukrainian children back home means restoring a little of their faith in goodness," the Human Rights Commissioner's Office said.

Previously: Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian Children's Rights Commissioner, has boasted about how she "re-educated" her so-called adopted son Pylyp, a Ukrainian teenager abducted from Mariupol.

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