Russia offers abducted Ukrainian children money for moving to any of its cities - media

This is the subject of an investigation by journalist Tom Watling of The Independent.

In the article, the journalist tells the story of five teenagers who were taken by the invaders to Russia or the occupied territory before being eventually returned to Ukraine.

He talked to five Ukrainian children who returned from Russia, aged 12 to 17, about their experiences in Russian "rest camps".

Liza Batsura, 16, who was transferred by Russia from Kherson to occupied Crimea in September 2022 when she was 14, says she remembers the moment a Russian official entered her classroom at Genichesk Vocational School No. 27 near the Crimean peninsula.

She says the school director told her that he would put her in the basement if she refused. Only in May of the following year was she rescued by her divorced mother, Oksana Halkina.

"The teacher told us someone was coming. Then we were taken into a room with one big table and chairs, and this woman walked in. She said it was not safe in Henichesk because of the war. She said it would be better for us in Russia, where we would have all these advantages," says Liza.

According to her, the woman, surrounded by official-looking men, offered each child 100,000 rubles to "move to any Russian city we wanted".

"In the end, I thought, I am closer to Ukraine than I am to Russia,” she says. “The whole atmosphere of Russian propaganda was very annoying as well," says Lisa Batsura, adding that one of the children who did accept the Russians' offer, 17-year-old Zorik Ibrian, stayed in Henichesk.

Bohdan Shvetsov hated the daily routine of singing the Russian national anthem the most. Russia moved him from Kherson to Crimea in October 2022, when he was 12 years old. When they reached Yevpatoria, where all the Kherson children were first taken, he was separated from his classmates, put on a bus and taken to a nearby camp, where he was forced to participate in a routine built around Russian propaganda.

"They made us sing the national anthem first thing every morning before physical exercise.We were made to stand in two rows. The care-givers would walk back and forth between us to make sure we were singing," he says.

Liza also describes the moment when the camp's security chief found a Ukrainian flag in one of her bags.

He gathered us around and torched the flag in front of us. Then he said: ‘Look, this is how your country will burn’

Liza adds that he regularly called them 'ukrops' and 'khokhly'.

Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights, said that the Russians are doing "everything to block the return of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children".

"Ever since Russia occupied Crimea and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions in 2014, Russia has been deporting Ukrainian children and violating the rights of civilians. Then we had eight years of discussions about the return of children. Did we get any concrete results? No. The only real way to stop the deportation of Ukrainian children is to liberate all the occupied territories of Ukraine. We have no other way," he said.

• On June 14, Ukraine returned 12 children from the temporarily occupied territory of Kherson region. One of the girls was deprived of parental care.