Ukraine’s Prosecutor General has filed charges against a Russian soldier who organized and participated in the forced deportation of 15 Ukrainian children at gunpoint in southern Ukraine.
According to official documents seen by media outlet Euronews, the case centred on children in the care of a local school director and her husband in the village of Novopetrivka in the Kherson region, during Russia’s occupation.
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Three of the children were orphans, 10 had no parental care and the remaining two were living in what was described as difficult circumstances.
The accused Russian soldier and several other service men arrived at the school, threatened people with weapons and later interrogated the director.
Deportation to Russia
The next day, the Ukraine Prosecutor General says, the soldiers organized the forcible removal of the children who were escorted by approximately 20 armed servicemen. The director and her husband were also taken.
The group was first deported to Stepanivka, deeper inside Kherson where they stayed for around three months. In October, shortly before the region was liberated by Ukraine, they were moved to Russian-occupied Crimea and then on to Krasnodar Krai in Russia.
The children were then housed in a child care institution and, according to the court papers, forced to “sing the national anthem, participate in propaganda events and were forbidden from speaking Ukrainian.”
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