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KYIV – Russia has agreed to release four Ukrainian children aged 2 to 17 and allow them to return to their families in Ukraine after Qatar intervened as a mediator, according to a government official briefed on the matter. Two of the children are now back with relatives and two others are expected to be reunited with their families in the coming days, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic negotiations.
Qatar’s role in the negotiations, which lasted several months, came at the request of the Ukrainian government.
The Ukrainian children passed through the Qatari embassy in Moscow and took different routes home. Some traveled or were supposed to travel from Russia to Ukraine via Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Others traveled via Belarus.
Travel arrangements included multiple modes of transportation, including a diplomatic convoy, a train and a privately chartered plane through Qatar, the official said.
“We welcome today’s positive news about the reunification of children with their families in Ukraine through Qatari mediation efforts,” Lolwah Al-Khater, Qatar’s Minister of State for International Cooperation, said in a statement. In recent weeks, Qatari officials have been in “continuous dialogue with our Ukrainian and Russian counterparts,” she said.
The reunifications mark an important development in one of the most contentious and sensitive issues since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
They also shine a diplomatic spotlight on Qatar. The small Gulf country has often served as a key negotiator in global crises and could play an outsized role in negotiations over the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that controls the Gaza Strip.
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In March, judges at the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued arrest warrants against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, accusing them of war crimes. The two each bear individual responsibility for the “illegal deportation”. ” and “illegal transfer” of Ukrainian children to Russia.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the arrest warrants as “outrageous and unacceptable,” but also irrelevant for Russia from a legal perspective since Russia is not a party to the International Criminal Court.
At the time the arrest warrants were issued, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said Ukraine was investigating about 16,000 cases of forced deportations of children.
Putin passed a decree in May 2022 making it easier for Russian families to adopt Ukrainian children from the war zone, and Lvova-Belova was among the Russians who did so, adopting a boy from the besieged city of Mariupol.
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, who also serves as foreign minister, visited Moscow in June, where he met Putin and other senior officials.
The following month, he visited Ukraine, where he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and pledged $100 million in humanitarian aid for health, education and demining. During this visit, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal publicly thanked Qatar for its willingness to mediate the return of Ukrainian children from Russia.
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The full extent of the transfer of children to Russia is unclear. The official said a Ukrainian list contained the names of thousands of children, while a Russian list listed only hundreds – a discrepancy that could make it difficult to find and return all of the children wanted by Ukraine.
Forcibly removing children or depriving them of their identities is generally considered a war crime, but the ICC’s arrest warrants are unlikely to result in a court appearance unless Putin or Lvova-Belova travel to a country willing to take them to arrest.
Putin missed a summit of BRICS leaders in South Africa in August because he feared he could be arrested. Last week he made a rare trip abroad to Kyrgyzstan.
The four Ukrainian children returning home this week are the first to be released under negotiations with Qatar because “all parties agreed that they had found their parents and all documents matched.” [and] They could be reunited,” the official said.
If everything goes smoothly, the official added, this could pave the way for more returns.
Qatar News Agency photos reviewed by The Washington Post before publication showed a little boy, his face blurred, sitting between his grandmother and Lvova-Belova. Other photos showed him hugging and shaking hands with a Qatari diplomat.
The two-year-old, who will return to Ukraine’s Zhytomyr region, was in hospital – and was just six months old – when Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022 and “lost contact with his mother,” the newspaper said .
The two have now been reunited in Russia and are expected to travel to Ukraine this week. Details about how and when the then-child was transferred to Russian custody are unclear. Russian forces occupied some parts of the Zhytomyr region in the first weeks of the war before being forced to withdraw.
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A 7-year-old boy placed in a children’s home in Russia was recently reunited with his grandmother, who traveled to Russia via Estonia, the official said. The couple is now on their way back to Ukraine. The boy’s mother, who was arrested in Russia, remains in custody there. It was not clear when or why she was arrested.
The group also includes a 9-year-old boy who was staying with his grandparents in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region when Russia invaded and occupied the area, including the regional capital. The boy is expected to travel back to Ukraine on Wednesday.
The 17-year-old, whose family was unable to come to Russia to pick her up, is also expected to see her relatives again on Wednesday.
Some other Ukrainian children held in Russia were also released to their parents on a case-by-case basis, usually after a relative traveled to Russia and personally accompanied them home, a task that for many Ukrainians can be difficult, dangerous and financially impossible can families.
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