KHERSON, Ukraine (AP) Dec,5- Hours after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, medical workers at a children’s hospital in the south began secretly planning how to save a baby.
The Russians were suspected of confiscating the orphans and sending them to Russia, so staff at the regional children’s hospital in the city of Kherson began falsifying medical records of the orphans to make them look sick and incapacitated.
“We deliberately wrote false information that the children were sick and could not be transported. Olga Pilyarska, head of the intensive care unit. “We are not known (to the Russians). I was worried.. (but) we decided to save the children at all costs.”
During the war, Russians were accused of deporting Ukrainian children to Russia or the Russian-occupied territories and raising them as their own.At least 1,000 children were killed during the eight-month occupation of the Kherson region by Russia. were confiscated from schools and orphanages in the Kherson region, local authorities said. Her whereabouts are still unknown.
In the village of Stepanivka on the outskirts of Kherson, the director of the social and psychological rehabilitation center Volodymyr Her Sahaidak also forged her documents to hide 52 orphans and vulnerable children. The 61-year-old left some of his children with his seven employees, others were taken in by distant relatives, and some of his older children stayed with him, he said. Said. “If I didn’t hide my children, they would have taken me away,” he said.
But moving them wasn’t easy. After the Russians occupied Kherson and much of the region in March, they began segregating orphans at checkpoints, forcing the Sahaidak to get creative about how to transport the orphans. In one instance, he falsified records showing that a group of children were treated in a hospital, taken by an aunt, and then taken by a mother who was nine months pregnant and was waiting for them across the river. .
The Sahaidak were able to fend off the Russians, but not all the children were so lucky.In October, about 50 children were evacuated from the Kherson Orphanage, where the hospital sent 11 babies, and was sent to Russia. were taken to Crimea, which was illegally annexed in 2014, security guards and neighbours at the facility told The Associated Press.
Anastasia Kovalenko, who lives nearby, said: “A bus with a Z (Russian symbol on cars) came and took her away.” advertisement
At the beginning of the invasion, local relief groups tried to hide the children in a church, but months later the Russians found them, took them back to the orphanage and evacuated them, locals said. rice field.
Earlier this year, the Associated Press reported that Russia was trying to give thousands of Ukrainian children to Russian families for foster care or adoption. deported to Russia or Russian territory, lied that their parents did not want their children, used them for propaganda, and gave them a Russian family and Russian citizenship.
The War Research Institute, a Washington-based think tank, says Russian authorities are conducting targeted depopulation campaigns in occupied Ukraine, deporting children under the guise of medical rehabilitation and adoption programs. says it does.
Russian authorities have repeatedly said that moving children to Russia is to protect them from hostilities. Russia’s foreign ministry has denied allegations that the state is confiscating and deporting children. She said authorities are looking for relatives of orphans stranded in Ukraine and looking for ways to bring them home if possible.
