Russian military abduct orphanage kids during Kherson's occupation - media

The New York Times reported the information.

The journalists tracked how a network of Russian officials and politicians affiliated with Vladimir Putin's party conducted a campaign to relocate (and in fact abduct) Ukrainian children.

The orphanage housed infants and children under five, some of whom had serious disabilities. The children were not orphans, some of their parents had restricted parental rights. Other children were removed from dysfunctional families or abandoned.

After Russia's full-scale invasion began, the pastor of a local church learned of the plight of the orphanage and convinced the staff to move the children to his church, where he could at least provide them with heat, light, and food.

However, on April 25, 2022, Russian officials found the children and forcibly took them almost 300 km from their homes, all the while filming the children for propaganda videos.

Subsequently, the director of the institution, Olena Kornienko, and one of the teachers, Natalia Lukina, refused to cooperate with the occupation authorities and resigned from the institution because they did not want to participate in what Russian officials could do to the children.

The occupation authorities appointed Tetiana Zavalska, one of the institution's pediatricians who did not hide her pro-Russian views, as the new head of the institution. Soon the orphanage was registered in the Russian system.

On October 21, 2022, ambulances and buses with the letter "Z" arrived at the orphanage. "One by one, the names of 46 children were called out. After that, they were taken into buses and ambulances dressed in winter jackets," the article says.

According to journalists, the children were transported to Simferopol and divided between two children's institutions. Employees of one of them were previously accused of improper childcare.

The New York Times journalists analyzed posts on Russian social media, gained access to photos, videos, text messages and documents. According to legal experts, what happened to the children may constitute a war crime.

It is noted that at least seven children from the Kherson Children's Home returned to Ukraine with the assistance of the Ukrainian authorities and intermediaries from Qatar. Among them are Anastasia and Mykola Volodin, whose mother went to Moscow to get them in February this year.

"Later, Anastasia died in a Ukrainian hospital, just a few weeks after she turned six. The doctor diagnosed her death as an epileptic seizure. Mykola is under the care of the Ukrainian state while his parents are waiting for a court decision on their parental rights," the article says.

The rest of the abducted Kherson children are still under Russian rule.

• Ukraine has returned five children from Novopetrivka boarding school in the Mykolaiv region who were deported to Russia by the invading forces.