Ukraine children returned from Russia lived ‘with rats, cockroaches’: Report

Ukraine children who were “kidnapped” by Russian forces from the regions of Kherson and Kharkiv reunited with their families.

The humanitarian organisation Save Ukraine reported that 31 children were reunited with their families in Ukraine this week after a long operation to bring them back from Russia. The children had been taken from occupied areas during the war.

“Now the fifth rescue mission is nearing its completion. It was special regarding the number of children we managed to return and also because of its complexity,” Mykola Kuleba, the founder of the Save Ukraine said.

The children who returned from Russia were ‘living with rats and cockroaches’, Mykola Kuleba claimed adding that no one in Russia was trying to find their parents in Ukraine.

“There were kids who changed their locations five times in five months, some children say that they were living with rats and cockroaches,” he said.

The children were taken to what Russians called stays in summer camps from occupied parts of Ukraine’s Kharkiv and Kherson regions, he informed. Since Moscow’s invasion in February last year, Ukraine estimated that nearly 19,500 children have been taken to Russia.

Kyiv has condemned these “illegal deportations” while Moscow which controls chunks of Ukraine’s east and south, denied abducting children, saying that the children had been transported away for their own safety.