Twenty-three Ukrainian children and adolescents have been evacuated from areas of the country under Russian occupation and transferred to territory controlled by Kiev, President Volodymyr Zelensky's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, announced.
Yermak wrote on the Telegram app that the rescue was carried out as part of the president's "Bring Back the Children of Ukraine" program, which aims to bring children deported to Russia or detained in Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine to safety.
According to him, among the returned children are two sisters who refused the request of the Russian-appointed authorities to attend a Russian school, after which the occupation authorities threatened to take them away from their mother.
Another teenager refused to go to a Russian school, and a child and her mother were not allowed to leave the occupied territory because one of their relatives served in the Ukrainian army, Reuters reports.
Ukraine claims that Russia has illegally deported or forcibly transferred more than 19.500 children to Russia and Belarus, in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
A September study by the Yale University School of Public Health suggests the actual number could be closer to 35.000.
Russia denies deporting children from Ukraine, saying it was acting to protect them from war conflicts.
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