(Reuters) – Russia and Ukraine have agreed to return a total of nine children to each other to be reunited with family members, according to a senior Russian official, in the latest humanitarian exchange between the warring countries.
The transfers were agreed after mediation by Qatar, which has brokered several similar deals since the start of the full-scale war in February 2022.
Russian Children’s Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova said on Thursday that six boys and a girl, aged between six and 16, were being returned to relatives in Ukraine.
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“Most of the children lived in Russia with close relatives, mainly grandparents. A 16-year-old boy, who had been left without parental care since birth, was in the Aleshkinsky orphanage. His brother took custody of the child,” she said.
“The children’s stories are very different, some are especially dramatic. The parents of a 12-year-old boy were divorced and, this year, his mother died. Now the boy will go to his father in Ukraine.”
Lvova-Belova said on Wednesday that Qatar’s mediation also allowed the repatriation of two Russian boys, aged 7 and 9, from Ukraine.
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She said the oldest boy was being reunited with his mother, after living with his father and grandmother in Ukraine since 2019. The youngest was returning to his father following the death of his mother, who had taken him to Ukraine in 2020.
Lvova-Belova did not say how most of the children ended up in Russia.
Ukraine says around 20,000 children have been taken to Russia or Russian-occupied territory without the consent of their family or guardians since the start of the war, calling the abductions a war crime that meets the Ukraine treaty’s definition of genocide. UN.
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Moscow says it protected vulnerable children from the war zone.
In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Lvova-Belova and President Vladimir Putin in connection with the abduction of Ukrainian children. Russia called the warrants “outrageous and unacceptable.”
(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan and Lucy Papachristou)
