After four months of separation, Olga Lopatkina, now a refugee in France, returns to embrace all her children – two biological and seven adopted. Four boys and two girls, who were held against her will in Donetsk, including Timofey, her eldest son.
“I even had Timofey find stuffed animals and sew mom and dad’s phone number and address inside, so they could find us as they grew up,” says this Ukrainian mom. .
Taken to Donetsk
When the war broke out, the family lived in the east, in Vougledar. Olga takes refuge in Zaporojia but six of her children are in a holiday resort in Mariupol. As they were about to join her, they were diverted further north.
“There is a woman who intercepted our children in a territory where there was no danger… She stopped them halfway and took them to Donetsk,” he says.
“You could say they were kidnapped,” she says.
“A place from which there is no escape”
“At 3 in the afternoon the bus arrives with this Eleonora, and they put us on the bus, like merchandise,” Timofey, the eldest of the brothers, testifies. With their brothers and sisters, they will be trapped for more than three months in a hospital, under pro-Russian control.
We also see them in a report filmed by a separatist channel. This Russian woman appears, Eleonora Fedorenko, a child rights adviser from the Donetsk People’s Republic. “She gives me goosebumps,” Timofey breaths at the mention of her.
Eleonora Fedorenko can be found on the Kremlin website, proof of her official involvement. “It happened before my eyes, there was a girl who was taken to Russia under the pretext of going to a sanatorium. Then when I got to France, I learned that she had been placed with a family of welcome to Russia,” she says. Timofey.
“I consider that we are almost the only ones who have had the opportunity to leave a place from which there is no escape”
“evacuations”
In fact, his return to his parents took place after tough negotiations with the pro-Russian authorities. According to Timofey, all the Ukrainian children detained with them had Ukrainian parents.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, kyiv and NGOs have accused the Russian government of kidnapping and deportation of children, as well as forced adoptions. Russia, on the other hand, maintains that it is evacuating, not forcibly deporting, civilians to its territory.
UN organizations, including Unicef, are also mobilizing. According to Ukrainian authorities, at least 16,000 identified children have been taken to Russia. A figure that could be much higher.
Source: BFM TV
