23:45 / 11.03.2024 Мир

Five deported Ukrainian children died in Russia in six months, one of them committed suicide

The Russian authorities are afraid of children who were forcibly removed from Ukraine and are trying to "re-educate" them and put them under strict digital control. In addition, Ukrainian children are being given to Russian families in large numbers. In the first six months of 2023 alone, five deported children died in Russia, Dzerkalo Tyzhnia writes, citing the Medusa publication.

In the first six months of 2023, five Ukrainian deported children, taken to Russia from the occupied parts of Kherson and Luhansk regions, died in Russia. One of them committed suicide.

The Russian Ministry of Education monitors the fate of adopted Ukrainian children, including reports on their deaths. According to these documents, in the first six months of 2023 alone, five children taken from two regions died. One of them committed suicide. There are no reasons for the suicide in the documents obtained by the journalists.

In addition, the Russian Ministry of Education is supposed to conduct "preventive work" to prevent child suicides in the occupied territories. The Ministry is assisted in this by the Centre for the Study and Network Monitoring of the Youth Environment. However, the powers of the structure go far beyond the prevention of adolescent suicide.

Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian Ombudsman for Children's Rights, officially states that Russians cannot adopt a child from the 'new regions', but only 'arrange guardianship or take them into a foster family', but in practice, such statements are not true.

Having studied a number of documents for the three quarters of 2023, journalists found documentary evidence of a programme of mass adoption of Ukrainian children.

For example, in the first quarter of 2023, 220 orphans and children left without parental care were found in the self-proclaimed LPR and DPR, and 14 in the occupied part of Zaporizhzhia region. Of these, 26 children were "given up for adoption" to Russian citizens.

Four children were returned to their biological parents (under what circumstances is unknown). Seven more, on the contrary, were taken away from their relatives due to "an immediate threat to the life or health of the children".

In the second quarter of 2023, the Russian-controlled guardianship authorities continued to "find" orphans and children "left without care". They "found" 40 of them in Zaporizhzhia region, 286 in Luhansk region and 409 in Donetsk region. Six children were given up for adoption to Russian citizens from the occupied part of Donetsk region. 16 children were returned to their parents, but in the same period, another 19 children were taken away from their families due to "an immediate threat to life or health".

During this period, 45 children were "found" in Zaporizhzhia, 343 in the "LPR" and 569 in the "DPR". At the same time, the number of adoptions has increased dramatically, reaching 45. Most of the children were adopted from Donetsk region.

"The data collected by the Russian Ministry of Education does not reflect all cases of adoption: for example, in the months before such reporting was compiled in the occupied part of Kherson region, 10-month-old Margarita Prokopenko was taken from a local orphanage. As Vazhdennye Istori found out, in December 2022, she was adopted by the head of the A Just Russia - For Truth party, Sergei Mironov," the journalists remind.

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