Efforts to rescue Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia are underway

WAMU 88.5 | By Chris Remington

Published April 24, 2023 at 9:18 AM EDT

U.S. Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) (3rd L) speaks as Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) (4th L), Rep. Jimmy Panetta (D-CA) (R), Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova (L) and Prosecutor General of Ukraine Andriy Kostin (2nd L) listen in Washington D.C. during a news conference in front of the U.S. Capitol on missing Ukrainian children.

An estimated 16,000 Ukrainian children have been taken to Russia or Russian-controlled territory since the start of the war. That’s according to Ukraine’s National Information Bureau. But some human rights experts place the number in the hundreds of thousands.

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for the unlawful transfer of children out of Ukraine.

VitalyVertash is a Ukrainian teenager who returned home from a Russian camp a couple of weeksago. He spoke with Al Jazeera English about his experience inside the camp.

The first two weeks were normal. But after three weeks, I started to look for every possibility to go home. They fed us porridge without salt and sugar, three times a day. Every evening they spoke to us about politics. They would say Russia is a powerful country and Ukraine is a terrorist one.

Mykola Kuleba is fighting to get these Ukrainian children back home.He’s the CEO of Save Ukraine and the former ombudsman for Children with the President of Ukraine. We speak with Mykola and journalists on the ground in Kyiv about the latest in the war.