They had disappeared silently into the turmoil of war. On a Friday in autumn, on the eve of the school holidays, hundreds of children from the Kherson region had not returned home. The school management had encouraged parents to accept that their children would go to a two-week summer camp in Crimea. By the end of the vacation, no one had returned. Girls and boys had been embroiled in what appeared to be a massive Russian operation to deport and “Russify” the children of Ukraine.
Seventeen of them were taken from their families and taken back to Kiev on Wednesday, March 22 by the humanitarian organization Save Ukraine. The number for this rescue is staggering, while Ukraine has already identified 16,226 deported children and the number of victims could be much higher. These seventeen are the first to return from Russia or the occupied Ukrainian territories since the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague on 17 Belova, Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights.
Fifteen of these minors are from the Kherson region and were deported under an identical scenario. These are not extremely violent cases, as documented by Ukrainian or international investigators, of children abducted on deportation routes after the murder or arrest of a parent, or while passing through “filtration camps”. Instead, they fell victim to an insidious method of inviting them to summer camp through the school system and not returning them to their families.
Nikita, 10, has just returned to Crimea from a five-month deportation. In Kiev, March 22, 2023. ADRIEN VAUTIER / THE PICTORIUM FOR “THE WORLD”
On March 22, 2023 at the premises of the Save Ukraine organization in Kiev. ADRIEN VAUTIER / LE PICTORIUM POUR “LE MONDE” Also read: Article reserved for our subscribers War in Ukraine: why the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin
“They told us that our parents didn’t want us anymore”
Thus, on October 7, 2022, hundreds of children from Kherson were taken to Crimea and two weeks later did not return. The school directors told the parents that the stay at the summer camp was extended by order of the military administration due to fighting to protect them. The motive was flimsy because, apart from the fact that it is against international law to separate children from their families, the recapture of Kherson by the Ukrainian army did not occur until the following month, on November 11, after a Russian military retreat, in good order and without destroying the city.
11-year-old Yana, originally from Kherson, spent five and a half months at a holiday camp in Crimea with her older sister and younger brother. The Russian army informed their parents that the children could not return for safety reasons. In Kiev, March 22, 2023. ADRIEN VAUTIER / THE PICTORIUM FOR “THE WORLD”
The leaders of the holiday camps gave very different speeches to the children, which clearly support the thesis of kidnapping and illegal deportation. “They told us that our parents didn’t want us in Ukraine anymore. They threatened us: either we went to their Russian school or we risked going to jail,” says Genia, 15. “We had to remove the Ukrainian symbols like a blue and yellow bracelet and sing the Russian anthem every day” said Taya. “When I saw that we only had a mattress and a pillow, I asked for a blanket and sheets. The leader of the camp answered me: “Hey, you forgot that you are from Ukraine! Your parents have already forgotten you, you don’t want anything here!” whispers Vitaly, 16. “I was afraid to stay there forever, Genia testifies, because they said that if our parents didn’t pick us up before the end of the school year, we would sent to orphanages in Russia. »
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