Children abducted by Russia return to Ukraine
A group of 17 children have returned to Ukraine with the help of an NGO from "deportation" from Russia or occupied Ukrainian territories, AFP reports. As they got off a bus in Kiev, a ten-year-old boy jumped into his father's arms.
Denis Zaporozhenko has not seen his son - or his two daughters, who are also on the bus - for six and a half months.
They were all living together in Herson, in occupied southern Ukraine, when they were separated, he says, on 7 October, a month before Ukrainian forces recaptured the town.
Terrible fighting was looming in Herson as part of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, and Zaporozhenko says he agreed to send his children away from the war to "holiday camps" further south in annexed Crimea.
Russian officials at the school where his children were enrolled "promised to send them to this camp for a week or two," he says. "But by the time we realised we shouldn't have done that it was too late."
He says he was able to talk to his three children on the phone during those long months apart.
Ukraine considers these children - like at least 16,000 others - "abducted" by the Russians.
Moscow denies this and boasts that it has "rescued" them from the war and that it has set up procedures to reunite them with their families.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) last week issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin, charging him with the "war crime of illegal deportation" of minors.
According to official Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office data on Thursday, 16,226 children have been deported since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.
Since that date, 465 children have been killed, 940 have been injured, and 395 are listed as missing because of the war.
De la această dată, 465 de copii au fost ucişi, 940 au fost răniţi, iar 395 sunt daţi dispăruţi din cauza războilui.
