Kolo Patriotiv

Save the Ukrainian children deported to russia!

An open letter to European Heads of State and Government

We appeal to our compatriots and all European and world citizens to pressingly call upon the Heads of State and Government throughout Europe: Ukrainian children abducted and deported to Russia must be saved!

Over 300,000 Ukrainian children are currently being held on Russian territory, without any guarantees or external controls on their living conditions. Some of them are said to be deliberately separated from their parents by the Russian authorities.

Moreover, according to a UN survey, several thousand unaccompanied minors, orphaned or not, are at risk of being adopted by Russian families (Russia has not ratified the 1993 Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Inter-Country Adoption). In addition, Vladimir Putin has simplified the granting of Russian citizenship to these children by decrees of 25 May and 11 July 2022, thus facilitating adoption procedures for Russian families. Everything indicates that such forced adoption procedures have already taken place and are currently going on.

We must say NO to forced adoption and russification of kidnapped children!

Some of these children are already "in the process of re-education" – that is, russification! ─, as boasted by the Russian first television channel. The brainwashing of children is, in fact, part of the plan to eradicate the Ukrainian nation outlined by Timofei Sergeitsev, a close associate of Putin (RIA Novosti, April 2022), whose negationist remarks are taken up daily by the Russian media.

We cannot leave these thousands of forcibly deported and isolated Ukrainian children in the Kremlin’s hands. The forcible transfer of minors is a heinous and morally and politically unacceptable crime. According to the 1948 International Convention on Genocide (Article II), this is strictly speaking a genocidal act!

We urge the President of the European Council, the President of the European Commission, but also the Heads of State and Government of the whole of Europe to intervene unanimously and publicly by demanding from Russia the release of the children and all deported Ukrainian civilians.

We ask them to call on the relevant international organisations, including UNICEF and the International Red Cross, to intercede as soon as possible with the Government of the Russian Federation in order to visit these children, examine their living conditions and organise their repatriation to Ukraine.

Rescue of a child from a crushed high-rise building in Mykolaiv, 10/13/2022

On October 13, after one in the morning, Russia once again massively shelled Mykolaiv. In particular, a five-story residential building was hit. The two upper floors were completely destroyed, the rest - under rubble.

The video shows the rescue of a boy trapped under rubble. The video also shows that the building is badly damaged

239 Ukrainian children are missing, 8140 are considered deported

Data on affected children as of October 13, 2022: 239 - missing, 8140 - deported, 6578 - found.

These numbers are not final, as work is ongoing to establish them in places of active hostilities, in temporarily captured and liberated territories

More than seven thousand Ukrainian children were illegally taken to russia

More than seven thousand Ukrainian children were illegally taken to the territory of the russian federation.

Dmytro Lubinets, the Verkhovna Rada's Commissioner for Human Rights, stated this in an interview with "Voice of America", reports Ukrinform.

"According to our data, more than seven thousand Ukrainian children were illegally taken to the territory of the russian federation. The russians are doing everything to prevent our children from returning, even simplifying their legislation so that citizens of the russian federation can adopt Ukrainian children as easily as possible," he said.

The Ombudsman called the deportation of Ukrainian children to russia a violation of international law and genocide of the Ukrainian nation.

Lubinets noted that the Office of the Ombudsman is working on the return of the children. So far, 51 children have been returned.

The girl who lost her arm to the russians received a unique prosthesis

9-year-old Sasha Filipchuk and her family evacuated from Gostomel. She was hiding in Bucha with her mother. It was there that the injury occurred, as a result of which the girl lost her arm.

Sasha in the USA installed a unique prosthesis. In fact, now the girl has a new hand. She can bend her fingers again.

The ultra-light prosthesis is called TrueLimb. It was developed by the New York clinic Unlimited Tomorrow and provided to the child free of charge.

Telethon "For children for the future"

On September 25, the telethon "For children for the future" will be broadcast on the air of the "Edyny Novyni" marathon (ICTV, First, Inter, Rada, 1+1), on the M1 TV channel and on the platforms of media partners.

This telethon is an initiative of the All-Ukrainian Charitable Tavri Foundation (VBTF), which was founded in 1998 by Mykola Bagrayev. For 23 years, VBTF has been supporting children's creativity. The most famous project of the fund is the All-Ukrainian charitable children's festival "Black Sea Games", which has already been held 18 times in the city of Skadovsk, Kherson region. In 2022, the festival was supposed to take place on the 19th. However, the full-scale invasion of Russian troops into our territory radically changed the plans and took away the Tale on the Black Sea shore from our children. But they all have a common dream - they want to return home and meet again in peaceful Ukrainian Skadovsk at the Black Sea Games. And we will definitely make this dream come true.

Currently, the festival team, with the support of VBTF, is preparing a telethon "For children for the future" with the participation of contestants of the Black Sea Games and popular performers of modern Ukrainian music. The marathon will include stories about children's destinies and dreams, concert performances by young artists and joint numbers of children with stars of Ukrainian music, comments by well-known public figures and representatives of the creative industry, inclusions from different parts of the world, where a large number of Ukrainian children are now being forced to live.

We, the organizers of this project, have been educating and involving children in charity for more than 18 years. "Children for children" - this principle is the philosophy of the project. We, adults, should support the aspirations of young singing talents of Ukraine to help their peers who suffered from military actions.

The following Ukrainian performers will take part in the telethon "For Children for the Future": WELLBOY, Artem Pyvovarov, TARABAROVA, Ivan NAVI, Iryna Fedyshyn, Vitaly Kozlovskyi, KHAYAT, Druga Rika, BEZ OBMOZHEN, Oleksandr Ponomaryov, Mykhailo Khoma, KAZKA, Olya Tsibulska, Anna Trincher, ANTITILA, MYATA, Jerry Heil, TNMK, DOROFEEVA, Oleg Skrypka, Tina Karol, Evgeny Khmara, MONATIK, SERAFỲN, NK and participants of the festival "Black Sea Games": Solomiya Len, Denys Hryshchuk, folk art group "Vocal Ensemble" Sing", Artem Kotenko, Sofia Adamiv, Anastasia Lavrentyeva, Kateryna Manuzina, Anastasia Martyniuk, Anastasia Zavadska, Renat Karazhey, YAKTAK, Olena Usenko, Vladyslav and Bohdan Kucheruki, Orest Makarenko, Mark and Herman Galatenko, Masha Danilova, Alex Back, Valeria Furman . yska, Oleksandr Balabanov, Pavel Tabakov School of Music, Yesenia Seleznyov, Oleksandra Danilova, Stefania Veklich, Diana Danylyuk, Emir Zeynalov, Marta Samoliuk, Sofia Samoliuk, Dj Polinka.

The telethon "For Children for the Future" will be held with the assistance of the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine, the Committee of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on Humanitarian and Information Policy.

In the Dnipro, the dog Krym "mourned" at the ruins of its owners, who were killed by a russian missile attack

As a result of a rocket attack on a private house in Dnipro on the night of September 29, four people died: two children, their mother and grandmother.

Miraculously, only a dog named Krym survived. He sat on the ruins and waited for the owners. Since the beginning of the war, the woman decided to move her children to the private sector of the Dnipro, to her grandmother. It was there that on the night of September 29, a Russian rocket landed.

"People literally evaporated. Grandmother Alla, mother Natasha, daughter Vasylisa, 12 years old, and boy Ivan, eight years old. And little dog Jack. No. I will be honest until the end. Some did not just evaporate. They were found on neighbors' roofs. On the neighboring streets," said Dnipro Mayor Borys Filatov.

The house was completely destroyed. After the tragedy, only the dog Krym survived, who howled in the ruins when rescuers arrived there. Natalia's husband and children's father, who is currently serving in the Armed Forces, also came to the scene of the tragedy.

The dog was taken away by employees of the "Zookontrol" enterprise. He received a concussion due to shelling.

37 deported children were returned to Ukraine

The occupiers forcibly took children from Kharkiv region to the Russian town of Kabardinka (near Gelendzhik) at the end of August.

As reported by the Ministry of Reintegration, currently 37 children have been reunited with their relatives and are in a safe place in Transcarpathia.

"The return process was difficult, but ended successfully. In order to pick up their children, the parents traveled a long way through several European countries," the department says.

The families were placed in shelters for internally displaced persons. Comfortable living conditions were provided by Zakarpattia OVA, and international organizations helped people and gave them basic necessities.

A school class in a shelter at a metro station in Kharkiv

A new academic year has begun, Ukrainian schoolchildren have begun their studies for the first time in the conditions of a full-scale war with the Russian invaders. In Kharkiv, small students sit at desks in a shelter - at the metro station.

An improvised school class appeared at the Sportyvna station.

"Today, Ukrainian children study in schools with bullet holes in the walls and sandbags in the windows, bomb shelters in the basements..."

Russians are killing education

2,400 schools in Ukraine were damaged during the full-scale war
269 of them were completely destroyed.
For many children in Ukraine, there will be no September 1st. They have nowhere to go.

Three-year-old Sashko Semenyaga: "I live in a hut, if only at home

Three-year-old Sashunya Semenyaga from Novoselivka, Chernihiv district, grew several years older during the 35 days he spent in the basement with his relatives. The war forced them to leave their home in the afternoon of February 24. In the morning, Sasha's parents still had time to fill up the car and buy several bags of groceries. "With my husband and two minor sons, we went to visit my sister in Voznesensk," says Nataliya Semenyaga. - The sister's house is a little away from the front line, there is a good and reliable burial ground there. Therefore, when we learned about the orcs' attack, we did not delay."

They packed their suitcase for a few days, because they thought that they would soon return home. "I took one car and a tractor with me," recalls Sasha. "Mom allowed me to put it in my backpack with my clothes."

Little Sasha is fascinated by this kind of technology. Before the war, he had a whole collection of agricultural machinery: more than 50 tractors and combines. All of them took pride of place in the little farmer's room. This is the profession the boy dreams of.

Sashunya did not leave the cellar for thirty-five days, because in Voznesenskyi, which was occupied by the Rashists, it was forbidden to go outside and light a fire. "We were very cold," says the blue-eyed kid. "My mother put a jacket on me, covered me with blankets, and on top - her fur coat and my father's coat. She said that it was my tent, and I played there with a tractor and a car."

Parents say that Sasha went home every day. It was difficult for him to explain that there was a war going on, that we were attacked. The boy constantly asked for bread, although the family tried to prepare fresh food every day. "We quietly lit a fire and cooked something from the products that were in the cellar. They covered this small hearth with everything they could so that it would not be noticed by the enemy, - . Natalia tells. - But the children really wanted bread. And when the neighbor gave us another warm loaf, we just burst into tears. You would have seen with what thirst and pleasure the children ate it!"

Natalia with tears in her eyes remembers how on March 17, her wounded father crawled to their grave and informed them that their house was no longer there: "I let the dogs go (the family bred hunting dogs of the Laika breed, there were three of them. - Author). Everything is on fire there, so let them at least be saved."

Only Sasha believed that his beloved Aza would return. And she came back, - Natasha smiles. - When the troops retreated and we were able to get out of the cellar, the first thing we did was go to our house. Sasha went with us, because he did not accept any persuasion to stay. When we arrived at the fire, we saw Aza. She returned to the ruins."

There was nothing left of the house: the rooms, appliances, clothes, a collection of tractors and Sasha's laptop, which Saint Nicholas had brought him, were all destroyed by enemy bombs. It warmed Aza's soul. She was not going to leave her home. Therefore, the owners made her a booth and a pen out of burnt boards. Now Aza guards the yard, and the family still lives in Voznesensky with Natasha's sister. Recently, volunteers gave the Semenyag family a bicycle that Sashunya had dreamed of. "Now in Chernihiv, my mother will ride a bicycle to work and will be able to bring four bags of groceries from the city, instead of two," he explains in an adult manner.

And mom dreams of fulfilling the wishes of the whole family: "We want to build a summer kitchen and return to our yard. Sasha says that he is even ready to live with Aza in a cabin, if only at home."