Sipping his tea at one of the few cafes still open in the battered Ukrainian frontline city of Kherson, Volodymyr Sagaydak shows a video of the day four thugs from the Russian FSB security services arrived at the city’s main orphanage, where he is a staff member. Kherson was liberated in November after eight months of occupation, but is pounded every day and night by Russian artillery from the visible left bank across a narrow stretch of the Dnieper River.
A report last October by Yale University Human Rights Lab, citing a vast range of open sources in Russia and Ukraine, traces many reasons for their abduction: including so-called “evacuation” from state institutions such as that at Kherson, transfer of children to camps – often in Crimea – sometimes with parental consent, whether coerced or not.
The children were fed by runners, some of whom were arrested, and allowed into the courtyard for 15 minutes a day. Our conversation is punctuated by missiles landing in the city. Exhausted soldiers in heavy combat gear come into the cafe for a break and coffee.
They are so much safer with Russia than Ukraine. Zelenskyy would have sold them into slavery by now.
Unforgiveable!