WP: Russia agrees to return four children to Ukrainian families with Qatar's mediation
Reportedly, 32 more requests for the return of Ukrainian children to their homeland are being processed
The Washington Post reported that Russia has agreed to return four deported children aged 2 to 17 to Ukraine.
According to the newspaper, the negotiations on the return of the children were held with the mediation of Qatar. Two have already returned to their relatives, and two more are expected to return in the near future.
"We welcome today's positive news about the reunification of children with their families in Ukraine thanks to Qatar's mediation efforts," WP quoted Qatar's Minister of State for International Cooperation Lolwa Al-Khater as saying.
The photo shows a seven-year-old Ukrainian boy, the first of the children to meet his family thanks to Qatar's mediation in the repatriation of children taken from Ukraine to Russia, the Qatari Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
In the photo, his grandmother is next to him, and Russian children's ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova is on the right. The photo was taken at the Qatari embassy in Moscow on October 13, 2023.
On Monday, Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova said that Russia is currently working on 32 appeals for the return of Ukrainian children to their homeland in cooperation with the International Committee of the Red Cross.
She claims that "there are no tens, let alone hundreds of thousands of deported and detained children in Russia."
"We usually manage to resolve all issues in a month or two. In the framework of cooperation with the Ukrainian side, the Russian-Latvian and Russian-Estonian borders are most often used for family reunification," Lvova-Belova said.
According to her, as of today, 35 children from 24 families have been reunited with their relatives in Ukraine and other countries with the participation of the Ombudsman's Office.
On March 17 this year, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova on charges of illegal deportation and transfer of children from the occupied territories of Ukraine to Russia.
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