Ukraine returns three more children and their families from occupation
On Thursday, March 28, three more children and their families were returned from the temporarily occupied territories. The regions where this happened were not specified.
The next exchange was reported by the executive director of Save Ukraine, former Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights Mykola Kuleba.
It is noted that both children and parents are now safe, but they will have a long way to go to recover. As of today, there are 276 children whom Save Ukraine has returned from Russia and the occupied Ukrainian territories.
Mykola Kuleba spoke about two of the three children who were released. "Russians came to the house of Nadiya and her 14-year-old son Mykhailo twice to search them. The mother hid her son under a blanket and said he was sick. At the school where Mykhailo was forced to attend, the Russians organized a military school. Children were taught how to fly drones, and use weapons, and had a lesson every Monday to learn how to snitch. During the occupation, Nadiia lost her husband, and her eldest daughter and her family moved to Bulgaria. Nadiia and her son wanted to go with her, but she had to stay behind to take care of her mother-in-law, who was ill.
"To somehow stay alive during the occupation, I painted a lot. But then I had to burn all the drawings related to Ukraine," Kuleba said.
In the first months of the full-scale war, food disappeared from the shelves in the village of Maryna and her son Arthur, who is now 11. Some humanitarian aid was distributed in the village council. Then the Internet went down for four months. The Russians banned the use of Ukrainian SIM cards and Telegram so that people would not read Ukrainian news. At school, they told us that Ukraine no longer exists and that Kyiv was a Russian city. Parents were not allowed to enter the schools, and students studied under the supervision of the Russian armed forces.
At first, Arthur still went outside to play with his friends. But after the mortar attack, he never went out again.
Author - Serhii Kolomiets, 29/03/2024
