Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) said Monday it was investigating a travel agency owner in Crimea who allegedly supplied buses to Russia for the deportation of Ukrainian children from areas under Russian control.
“It was she who voluntarily agreed to assist the occupiers in forcibly deporting Ukrainian children from Kherson, Melitopol, Donetsk, Lugansk and Makiivka”the Ukrainian secret services claimed on the Telegram platform.
The minors included “orphans and hundreds of children whose parents were illegally detained while trying to leave the war zone,” they added.
The children were deported between September and October last year to Sevastopol, Crimea, the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, according to the same source.
The owner of the travel agency also helped find shelter for minors in Crimea, according to Ukrainian secret services, which added that “the employee” is currently in Russian-occupied areas in southern Ukraine.
Last March, Ukrainian authorities said they had identified more than 19,000 minors deported from the occupied territories by Russian forces.
These children were transferred without the consent of parents or guardians to other Ukrainian regions controlled by Moscow or to the Russian Federation itself.
The Ukrainian government said it had discovered the whereabouts of more than 11,000 children. In some cases, Kiev also knows the identity of Russian adoptive parents.
So far, Ukrainian authorities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have managed to return 361 minors to their families.
The military offensive launched by Russia in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 has so far led to the flight of more than 14.6 million people – 6.5 million internally displaced persons and more than 8.1 million to European countries -, according to the latest data from the UN. which classifies this refugee crisis as the worst in Europe since World War II (1939-1945).
At least 18 million Ukrainians currently need humanitarian aid and 9.3 million people need food aid and shelter.
The Russian invasion – justified by the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, with the need to “denazify” and demilitarize Ukraine for Russian security – was condemned by the international community at large, which responded by sending arms to Ukraine and to impose on Russia political and economic sanctions.
The UN presented 8,451 civilian deaths and 14,156 wounded as confirmed since the start of the war, underlining that these numbers are well below the real ones.
Source: DN
