Ukrainians struggle to find and reclaim children taken by Russia
Oleksandr has not seen his mother since Russian soldiers captured the pair in Mariupol, in southern Ukraine, in April and took her away. At 12, he escaped adoption into a Russian family only because he remembered his grandmother’s phone number and called her to come and save him.
Russia’s proxy social welfare officials in occupied Ukraine discouraged her, warning of heavy fighting.
“They said that they would send him to an orphanage or they would find a family in Russia,” said his grandmother, Lyudmila, of Ichnya, in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region. “I told them, ‘I’ll risk my life. I’ll come and pick him up.’ I was pleading with them not to send him to Russia.
“They told me, ‘It’s going to be very hard, and the paperwork is awful.’ I said I didn’t care,” Lyudmila said. The Washington Post is identifying her and Oleksandr by first names only to protect them from reprisal.
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ukrainians-struggle-to-find-and-reclaim-children-taken-by-russia/ar-AA15Cpwc
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