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The occupiers have developed five scenarios for the abduction of Ukrainian children

April 24, 2023, 7:25 267 zn.ua In most cases, children are "adopted" with living parents.

In most cases, children are

There are at least five schemes of abduction of Ukrainian children by the russian occupiers, which were tracked down when the children returned home, Darya Gerasimchuk, the authorized adviser to the President of Ukraine on child rights and child rehabilitation.

The first option is to abduct the children after filtering the parents. In particular, when the parents are detained by the russian military, the children are immediately taken away. First, they are taken to the temporarily occupied territory and then redirected and deported to russia. Those who managed to escape go to russia to look for their children.

The second scenario involves the abduction of children directly from the family.

"Sometimes it happens when they deprive "inconvenient" adults who do not want to cooperate with the occupiers of their parental rights under some invented laws of the occupation authorities," Gerasimchuk said.

It happens that russians took children from other relatives, such as grandparents, older brothers or sisters.

The third scheme is the murder of parents. Moreover, those children who were left in the care of relatives or friends of the deceased family are also taken away.

"This happened, for example, in the case of the first two children we managed to return. Ilya was seriously wounded in the leg, and his mother died in his arms. Kira lost her father right before her eyes when he was trying to fetch water. And, in fact, the russians took these kidnapped children to Donetsk, preparing for deportation to russia," the presidential adviser said.

She noted that all children from these three categories were immediately taken away from their mobile phones and were not allowed to call their relatives and friends to inform them where they were and what happened to them. The russians do everything so that children cannot tell where they are. The children were told that they are not needed by their relatives, they are not loved and now they will be russians.

The fourth option is when the russians do not allow the Ukrainian side to take to safety those children who are in institutions of institutional care that have fallen under the occupation. After the children in the institution are pushed to the limit, they are taken to russia.

The fifth and most widespread scenario of child abduction is the removal of children for so-called "rehabilitation". First, the russians create conditions in the occupied territories that are absolutely unsuitable for a child to live in. After that, they allegedly offer the parents to "voluntarily" give the child a so-called vacation for 3 weeks or a month.

"Why is it supposedly "voluntary" because, first of all, the parents have no other way out at all, because there is no food, nothing for the child to survive in this territory, where the russian foot has set foot. Secondly, very often parents are told: "If you don't give up your child voluntarily, we will deprive you of your parental rights, and you will never see your child again at all," Gerasimchuk said.

However, these children are never returned home. In particular, there are children who spent almost a year in "camps".

"They were moved from one to another, of course, without agreeing with their parents. Those who had mobile phones, although sometimes had the opportunity to contact, but parents could not influence absolutely anything. These children were constantly transported, they were constantly told that their parents didn't need them, that they got rid of them, that they will now be in russia, and after they come from the camps, they will go to russian families," said Gerasimchuk.

The National Information Bureau under the Ministry of Reintegration of Ukraine reports that 19,514 Ukrainian children are considered illegally deported to the russian federation. In particular, about 4,390 orphans and children deprived of parental care are known.

Recently, 45 member states of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) supported the investigation into the abduction of Ukrainian children by the occupiers.

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