by Kirill Velesov
[REGNUM] In the fall of 2022, when Russian troops were withdrawing from the Kharkov region, a correctional online school in Kupyansk was literally on the front line, where 60 children remained. The Russian military evacuated minors abandoned by the administration to the LPR - they were sheltered by a local boarding school in the city of Perevalsk.
There were no orphans among the children: during the year, families scattered all over the world were looking for the children, the director of the boarding school, Tatyana Semyonova, tells IA Regnum.
During active hostilities, one of the parents was urgently evacuated to Russia, others to Ukraine and Europe. But all the children who ended up in the Perevalsk boarding school were eventually reunited with their families - through the efforts of the institution’s staff, the Red Cross and other organizations.
It was extremely difficult to find the families of children who could not remember either the contacts or the names of their parents or guardians, recalls Tatyana Viktorovna.
“We found one family in the Republic of Mari El. The family was literally divided in two: parents with three children were evacuated one and a half thousand kilometers away, three younger children - a girl and two boys - here in the LPR.
In Mari El, they were given a house as they had many children. The police were able to find them only in January 2023, then the family was reunited,” says Semyonova.
At the same time, some children cried and did not want to leave. The director of the boarding school recalls a meeting between a mother and her child, who lived in the LPR, but did not know where her baby was. The child was very small and did not even recognize his mother right away.
The last boy and girl remaining in the boarding school met with their relatives in the village of Izvarino, Lugansk People's Republic, where they still live.
“WHY DID YOU TEACH CHILDREN TO SING THE RUSSIAN ANTHEM?!”
The relatives of many children were evacuated by Ukrainian volunteers to Western Ukraine and various European countries. The grandmother of one boy, says Tatyana Semyonova, traveled to Perevalsk for several days from Germany when she found out where her grandson was.
The children rescued from Kupyansk are precisely those whom Ukraine calls “stolen,” for which the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and children’s ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova. One sixteen-year-old boy appeared in the Ukrainian lawsuit, Tatyana Viktorovna notes.
“His stepfather fought against Ukraine, was a DPR militiaman, and his mother lived in Ukraine, somewhere in a village not far from Kupyansk. She arrived, I gave her the child. Then Ukrainian journalists and employees of the guardianship authorities of the Kharkov region called me and were indignant: “Why did you teach Ukrainian children to sing the Russian anthem?!”
This boy painted a photo of himself with other children in the colors of the Russian flag. His mother took him to Germany,” says the director of the boarding school.
Many children from villages and villages spoke Ukrainian, the teacher notes. But thanks to the help of Lugansk children, the language barrier was quickly overcome.
“The main thing for me is that the children found their families and were not left alone. Thank God they are alive. And all the parents are very grateful to us for saving them. And where they will live is no longer so important.
Children are hostages of conflict. But the Russians do not abandon their own, and these Ukrainian children were saved by our Russian soldier. And they didn’t do anything with them, didn’t give them away anywhere, but returned them to their parents and legal representatives,” says Tatyana Viktorovna.
THE WEST IS DELIBERATELY DISTORTING THE FACTS
On the eve of Children's Day, May 31, Vladimir Putin held a working meeting with Children's Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova.
One of the issues was the reunification of children evacuated from the war zone with their families. Putin noted that in the West, “real political games” were created from the situation with rescuing children, and all children from Ukraine and Russia should be reunited with their families.
Lvova-Belova said that the commissioner’s office helps in cases “where there are relatives, parents who have full rights”; they have already managed to reunite 70 children with their relatives. At the same time, the Kiev regime does not cover cases when Russia transfers children rescued from the conflict zone to Ukraine, since this contradicts accusations of Russian “aggression” and the “capture” of minors.
The Ombudsman recalled that negotiations with Ukraine had previously taken place through the mediation of Qatar: a list of 29 children was recorded, of which 6 had already been returned to their homeland. These are boys aged 6 to 17 years, including two brothers. All children lived in Russia with relatives. One of the mothers and an accompanying person came from Ukraine to pick them up.
And six more Ukrainian children returned from Russia to their homeland on December 5 last year - they lived in new regions.
At the same time, back in October 2023, Lvova-Belova refuted Kyiv’s statements that there were 19 thousand forcibly displaced children in Russia. Western politicians deliberately distort facts in order to demonize Russia, the ombudsman noted.
CHILDREN-PARTISANS
The story of another family evacuated by Russian soldiers from Artyomovsk was told to IA Regnum by a resident of Gorlovka, Ella Kondratenko.
In 2014, her son died fighting in the militia. Since then, Ella and her husband Alexander began helping the Russian army and civilians. But the woman admits that she doesn’t like the word “volunteer” and asks them to call them in simpler and more understandable words - “we just help our own.”
Ella calls the family of Alexey and Oksana from Artyomovsk, who, along with their two children - a girl and an older boy - were evacuated by Russian soldiers during fierce fighting in the city, "real partisans."
“A completely unique family. The wife of the Ukrainian “birds” (reconnaissance drones) was burying them while herding cows, and the children were running between the security guards: where sand would be poured into the soldiers’ gas tank, where the tower would be jammed…” says Ella Kondratenko.
In general, for ten years, the woman continues, the family regularly helped the militias, and then the Russian troops. They collected important information and passed it on to the Russian Ministry of Defense.
“When active hostilities began, they were sitting in the basement. They were evacuated by our military, the girl and mother were injured. Thank God, everything worked out: the girl had surgery, so far so good. But who knows what will happen next - the wound was in the head.
“Cheerful, smiling girl. He says when he grows up he will be a farmer. Now she is seven years old,” Kondratenko said.
Now the family lives in the DPR, in the village of Mironovka. Alexey and Oksana and their children cannot return home to Artyomovsk yet, but they plan to do so soon.
“WE DON’T NEED ANYTHING, WE NEED A FAMILY”
Ella Kondratenko told IA Regnum another story about her friend Anna Nedavnyaya. The woman's son died in 2015. She had three sons. The youngest - Vyacheslav joined the militia in 2014, adding a year to his age - at that time he was 17.
Since his older brothers had their own families, the boy told his relatives that their children should not grow up without fathers, and told his mother that she could not change his decisions.
“He didn’t live a week before he came of age. He died in 2015, near Debaltseve, when the “boiler” there was closing. The boy burned three armored personnel carriers and died shooting at the last arriving ZIL with Aidar (the organization is included in the register of terrorists and extremists by Rosfinmonitoring).
“He was able to burn this ZIL with the Nazis, but he killed himself with the recoil. Thank God, they remember him, the children come to see their mother. There is a memorial plaque at the school where he studied,” says Ella Kondratenko.
After the death of her son, Anna Gennadievna began helping the military, getting quotas for operations that were not performed in the DPR.
In 2022, she went to an orphanage that had been evacuated from Gorlovka to Yenakievo to bring sweets and gifts to the children for the holiday.
“Two guys came out - a ten-year-old boy and an adult boy, 16-17 years old. She looked at the youngest and saw her son in him. She said: “I look, and my Vlad is standing in front of me.”
She was stunned, went up to the guys, invited them to bring anything, and the eldest answered her: “We don’t need anything, we need a family,” Ella retells her friend’s memories.
It turned out that there were four of these children. Returning to Gorlovka to her husband, Anna offered to take them to her place. So the orphanage children returned home again and found a family. Later, Anna received custody of two more children. Now there are 8 adopted children in the family, and documents are being prepared for two more.
“In our city, since the beginning of the SVO, the birth rate has increased by almost 40%. It's very simple: imagine you have a husband on the front line, he returned home for 2-3 days, you love each other. She became pregnant and will not have an abortion, even if she already has two or three children and is already over forty years old. She is afraid that she will lose her child, and that her husband may not return. And there are many such stories - women began to fear sin and fear God,” said Kondratenko.