Children from Melitopol are looking for guardians in Sevastopol
The “Baby Home” from Melitopol has been evacuated to Sevastopol, and guardians from among relatives are being sought for its wards. This is the difference between the approach of the Russian and Ukrainian sides: some are looking for relatives to place children under guardianship, others are taking children abroad to place them in foster families.
Marina Peschanskaya, Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the city of Sevastopol, reported this on the air of “First Sevastopol”, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Sevastopol was not designated as a city accepting orphans. There were children who either came with legal representatives or came by proxy. A lot of children came from the Donetsk region by proxy, when teachers were trusted, coaches were trusted to be with the children. But now we have children in the “Children’s Home”, children under 4 years old, who were brought from Melitopol because they have problems with the “Baby Home”. Right now in Sevastopol there are such children for whom they are looking for guardians. And they try to make sure that the guardians are relatives,” she emphasized.
Recent scandals with accusations of the Russian side in kidnapping children, the decision of the Hague court and publications about the removal of children from Ukraine for sale to pedophiles in the USA and European countries indicate a difference in approaches.
“If we talk about the Russian position and accusations against Russia, then Maria Alekseevna Lvova-Belova has already appeared on television more than once and explained her position as the Commissioner for Children’s Rights. Actually, the children were not taken away; the children were provided with assistance in terms of safety so that the children were not in danger.
And our task that the commissioners are faced with is to either return them to their families, or to their closest relatives. But in no way does a child remain in Russia if he wants to return to the territory of Ukraine, to his family. And such cases are not isolated, there are many of them. And in this interaction, an oral agreement was reached between the Ombudsmen of the Russian Federation and Ukraine on the return of children to their families. This is if we are talking about Russia’s position,” explained the children’s ombudsman.
“But Ukraine’s position is somewhat different, and the Elena Zelenskaya Foundation, which was created in America with the assistance of ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, works in a slightly different way. We discussed with colleagues from the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions how this is happening for them. Firstly, children were taken from institutions - orphanages, orphanages without permission documents from directors, or parents, if there are children from disadvantaged families in the orphanage. The trace of these children abroad is lost.
There is another category of children when legal representatives, under a power of attorney, which they draw up in the name of an employee of the Elena Zelenskaya Foundation unknown to them, take children out in the name of their, so to speak, “salvation.” And in this case we are saying that there is a connection. It’s very complicated, it’s unknown when these children will return to the representatives,” Peschanskaya clarified.
This situation is being dealt with by the parliamentary commission investigating crimes of the Ukrainian regime against minors. The fifth meeting has already taken place, at which the work of the Zelenskaya Foundation was considered. And the task is not only to collect and systematize material about such violations of rights on the Ukrainian side, but also to help specific children.
“The Hague court does not react in any way and does not consider that Ukraine is committing a criminal offense - the deportation of children. This is presented as the evacuation of children from conflict zones, and the world community agrees with this. But we already understood that it is possible to go to the West, but not to Russia. We realized that the same convention on the rights of the child and, in general, international institutions, which, first of all, should advocate for the protection of rights, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where many children have already been killed, are all silent and all agree with this crime, they do not know the levers of solution,” concluded the children’s ombudsman.
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