Ukraine returns 6 children illegally deported to Russia by Russian puppet leader

Yanina Tertychna, head of the Department for Child Protection and Combating Domestic Violence of the Prosecutor General's Office, said.

According to the investigation, the head of the DPR Denis Pushilin, his adviser on children's rights and the director of the service for family and children's rights organized the illegal transfer of at least 31 children from the occupied Donetsk region to the Russian president's boarding house in the Moscow region.

Six of the deported children were returned, but 25 more remain in the territory of the aggressor country, the Prosecutor General's Office said.

"The deportation of these children did not comply with international humanitarian law. There were no grounds for their removal for health reasons. As the investigation established, after the children were taken to occupied Donetsk, they were not returned," the statement says.

According to Tertychna, the children were later deported to Russia and placed under the care of Russian families. Among them was a 17-year-old teenager from Mariupol, who was placed under the care of the Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights.

The Prosecutor General's Office also noted that the work on collecting evidence was very painstaking. Investigative journalists, in particular, the teams of the Schemes and You're Fine projects of the Ukrainian service of Radio Liberty and the Ukrainian English-language edition of the Kyiv Independent, joined the work.

What is known

On Tuesday, October 1, Ukraine's Security Service served in absentia suspicion notices to the head of the DPR Denis Pushilin and his accomplices Eleonora Fedorenko and Svetlana Mayboroda, who deported at least 31 Ukrainian children from the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk region to a boarding house belonging to the structure of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's affairs management.

According to the investigation, the defendants deported 16 underage boys and 15 girls. Among them are three children from Mariupol who were forcibly taken away from their father, who was sent to the Olenivka colony.

According to the investigation, during the deportation, the children were first taken to Donetsk, then bused to Rostov-on-Don, and then flown to Moscow. Later, they were taken to a countryside boarding house of the Putin administration.