Locating and returning children in the midst of war costs thousands of dollars, so Save Ukraine organizes and funds travel for women like Stetsenko.
“I was shaking at every border crossing,” she said. Going to Kyiv was intimidating, Stetsenko said. But leaving the country for the first time with her new Ukrainian passport was terrifying.
With Save Ukraine’s guidance, she traveled to Poland, then Belarus, and then boarded a flight to Moscow — the second time she had ever flown. She took the train to southwest Russia, which is where the Russian TV picked up her story.
Lvova-Belova shared the NTV report of Nikita and Stetsenko’s reunion on Telegram. Her official page on the instant messaging service is full of videos of children who, she says, Russia has “saved.”
“It’s hard to watch this reunion without tears,” Lvova-Belova captioned Nikita’s story.
“Russia has always helped and continues to help families be united,” she said in a statement to NBC News, echoing President Putin.
“Children are sacred,” he said last week in a meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. “We took them out of the conflict zone, saving their lives and health. That’s what happened.”
“We have never been against children being reunited with their families, if, of course, their relatives come through,” Putin added. “There have never been any obstacles to this, there are not, and of course, there never will be.”
Mykola Kuleba, the CEO of Save Ukraine, said this is an outright lie: The Russian government has not willingly returned any Ukrainian children, he said.
“They’re not giving them back — we’re taking them back,” he added.
In March, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for both Lvova-Belova and Putin, accusing them of the “unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children,” which is a war crime. Their actions, the warrant continued, “demonstrate an intention to permanently remove these children from their own country.”
And since March, Kuleba says, it has proved harder to return Ukrainian kids. The Ukrainian government says at least 370 children have been returned so far, all without Russian help.
“Russians understand now that each case is valued for the ICC,” Kuleba said. “Each case is evidence of a war crime.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
