WOMAN SPEAKS UKRAINIAN:
BOY SPEAKS:
WOMAN 2 SPEAKS:
MAN SPEAKS:
WOMAN 3 SPEAKS:
GIRL SPEAKS:
RALLYING SPEECH
A MOTHER SPEAKS:
EXPLOSION
NARRATOR: On the first day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine,
its troops entered Kherson.
On the city's outskirts, Volodymyr Sahaidak ran an orphanage.
He had 52 children under his care.
Volodymyr decided to stay with the children in the orphanage.
With only two staff members,
he relied on the older children to help him.
One of them was Denis, then 16.
One of Denis' closest family friends is his godmother, Olga.
Denis entered the orphanage after his mum died when he was six,
and his father was denied parental rights.
VOLODYMYR SPEAKS:
DENIS SPEAKS:
GATE BUZZES
Within months, the Russian authorities
had taken children from other orphanages
in Kherson to Russia or occupied Crimea.
VOLODYMYR SPEAKS:
When the Russians occupied the Kherson region,
over a million Ukrainians lived there.
Among them was 14-year-old Kostya,
living in a village with his father and sisters.
Under the strict curfew,
they were allowed out only to get food.
KOSTYA SPEAKS:
LIZA SPEAKS:
Kostya says the soldiers took him to a nearby basement
where he was detained all night.
His family thought Kostya had been taken away by the Russian military.
DOG BARKS
Kostya's family were scared the soldiers would return,
so they'd already taken what they could and fled.
LIZA SPEAKS:
By September, as the Russians reopened local schools and colleges,
more children from the Kherson region
were being caught up in the chaos.
Danil, then 14, was happy to be back with his classmates.
DANIL SPEAKS:
INTERVIEWER SPEAKS:
14-year-old Diana,
her sister Yana, and their younger brother Nikita
were also enrolled in a Russian-controlled school.
SIRENS BLARE
RAPID GUNFIRE
By October 2022,
the Ukrainian army were making progress
in pushing the Russians out of Kherson.
MAN SHOUTS COMMAND
INTENSE BOOM
As shelling intensified, some parents
got offers from Russian officials
to send their children to holiday camps
in Russia and Crimea for two weeks to keep them safe.
DANIL SPEAKS:
ALLA SPEAKS:
The camp was located in Russian-occupied Crimea,
nearly 200 miles from home.
DANIL SPEAKS:
Diana and her two younger siblings went to the same camp, too.
DIANA SPEAKS:
VOLODYMYR SPEAKS:
Among them were Denis and some of his college friends.
According to Denis,
he was taken by armed Russian soldiers
and moved far away to southern Russia.
OLGA SPEAKS:
At the holiday camp in Crimea,
children had been looking forward to going back home.
But at the end of the two weeks, the real situation became clear.
ALLA SPEAKS:
YANA SPEAKS:
INTERVIEWER:
Meanwhile, Kostya,
who was still living in Kherson with his neighbour Valya,
had been asked to go to a different camp in southern Russia.
With communications damaged by the fighting in Kherson,
Kostya's family couldn't get through to Valya.
LIZA SPEAKS:
Alla was anxiously trying to find ways to bring her son, Danil, back.
Denis, too, had started calling his family
saying he was desperate to come back.
Every spell... Wingardium Leviosa!
NARRATOR: As more and more families lost contact with their children,
they started calling charities to get advice.
The scale of the problem soon became clear.
KATERYNA SPEAKS:
Oksana was one of the mothers who contacted Save Ukraine,
anxious to find and bring home her 12-year-old son Nikita.
Eventually, the Russians reopened schools in the area
and Oksana sent Nikita back to his boarding school.
It was on the other side of the Oskil River,
connected by a key bridge.
DEEP BOOM
But within the week, a missile destroyed the bridge.
Nikita's school was cut off from Oksana's village.
OKSANA SPEAKS:
NIKITA SPEAKS:
Olga's concerns for Denis were also growing.
Privately, he had been phoning his family,
pleading for them to bring him back.
But now he started appearing on Russian state television
draped in a Russian flag.
DENIS SPEAKS:
VOLODYMYR SPEAKS:
By now, the children from Kherson
had been stuck in the Russian holiday camp for four months,
separated from their parents.
LIZA SPEAKS:
Diana and Yana's ten-year-old brother Nikita
was one of the youngest camp members.
NIKITA SPEAKS:
LIZA SPEAKS:
INTERVIEWER SPEAKS:
The process of removing Ukrainian children to Russia
is headed by President Putin's Commissioner for Children's Rights,
Maria Lvova-Belova.
Five months after its invasion of Ukraine,
the Russian government fast-tracked the process
of granting additional Russian citizenship for Ukrainians,
including all Ukrainian children taken to Russia.
As reports of missing children began to circulate,
The International Criminal Court started to investigate
potential war crimes.
In March, the court issued warrants for the arrest
of Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova
for the alleged unlawful deportation and transfer of children
from Ukraine.
Lvova-Belova had herself fostered a Ukrainian teenager from Mariupol.
He's just one of several Ukrainian children
who have been shown on Russian TV.
CROWD ROARS
Some displays have been cruder,
like this rally involving other children
from Mariupol, the city the Russians occupied after a brutal offensive.
In Ukraine, lawyers are working with
the International Criminal Court,
trying to build a case against Russia's removal
of children from their country.
They allege it's part of a wider Russian strategy.
With no direct contact to the Russian authorities,
Danil's mother, Alla, and other families
have decided to go and get their children themselves -
however risky.
Mama!
Ah!
SHE MUMBLES
Isn't it three years?
Diana, Nikita and Yana also finally made it back to Ukraine.
CAMERAMAN:
They now live in a shelter in West Ukraine,
with their parents.
INTERVIEWER:
After four long months of separation,
some parents and relatives were managing to reach their children.
But no-one had come for Kostya.
He didn't know that his family still had no idea where he was.
Kostya's Russian foster family was located
over 500 miles from his own family's village.
INTERVIEWER:
As Kostya's father was too ill to travel,
Liza volunteered.
But she had to wait until she turned 18 and had a passport.
LIZA:
INTERVIEWER:
KOSTYA:
With Denis's relatives unable to travel to Russia,
Olga, Denis's godmother,
has volunteered to make the difficult journey herself.
But she can't do it without support,
so she's come to the offices of Save Ukraine.
Olga is part of the same group of women going to Russia as Oksana.
It had been nine months since Oksana had last seen her son.
OKSANA:
MYKOLA:
HORN TOOTS
OLGA:
INTERVIEWER:
OLGA:
Olga and Oksana have embarked on their rescue missions.
They've gone via Poland and Belarus to try to reach Moscow.
INTERVIEWER:
SHE SIGHS
To add to Kateryna's worries,
Denis had been in touch with his family back home.
Just three weeks and we'll be in England.
After a worrying 36 hours,
during which the Save Ukraine charity
had no news about Olga,
Kateryna was finally able to make contact.
OLGA CHUCKLES
INTERVIEWER:
As weeks pass, Denis is increasingly becoming
a part of the Russian propaganda machine.
OLGA:
Russia says that Olga was denied access to Denis
because they only give children back to blood relatives
or legal guardians,
and because she didn't have the required papers.
After months of waiting,
Russia's Commissioner for Children's Rights,
Maria Lvova-Belova, has finally agreed
to give her first interview to a British broadcaster.
She is facing an international arrest warrant
for her part in the alleged unlawful deportation
of Ukrainian children from their country.
INTERVIEWER:
Maria, a mother of five, is also an experienced foster parent.
Some of the controversy around her was sparked
when she took 17-year-old Filipp from Russian-occupied Mariupol
into her own foster care,
after the city had been flattened by months of Russian shelling.
We spoke with him in the presence of Lvova-Belova's press officer.
Filipp's mother died when he was young,
and he didn't know his father well,
so he lived in foster care.
When Filipp was brought to Russia,
he was placed in a rehabilitation centre
outside Moscow.
It was there that he met Maria.
Maria Lvova-Belova says she has seen no evidence to support
the children's allegations of mistreatment or poor conditions
in the holiday camps.
But Ukrainian officials strongly dispute
the claims she made in her interview
about Russia's efforts to facilitate the return of Ukrainian children.
No-one knows the exact numbers of Ukrainian children
who have been removed to Russia.
However, Ukraine claims thousands of children are involved.
Lawyers here are working hard to get them back.
INTERVIEWER: