MOSCOW, June 3 (RIA Novosti) – Russia is ready to adopt all Ukrainian orphans that have been trapped in combat zones in Ukraine’s restive southeast, but it needs Kiev to secure their safe transit to Russia, Russia’s children rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said Tuesday.
“We are ready, our services that take care of parentless children are willing to accept every single orphan from Ukraine, we have all the necessary resources for that, just let us pull them out,” Pavel Astakhov urged.
According to the ombudsman, there are currently a thousand of children blocked in the battle areas in Ukraine’s south and east. Astakhov said that Ukraine had a total of 90,700 orphans, adding that orphanages in Russia were half-empty and marked for closure.
“Of course, they won’t let us [take the children away], but if I were [President Petro] Poroshenko and a father of four, like him, I’d care about the children who are in peril right now. A president must care about such things,” the official stressed.
Earlier, Pavel Astakhov called on the European Network of Ombudspersons for Children (ENOC) to protect the children trapped in southeastern Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk.
According to Astakhov’s webpage, an NGO in Luhansk urged international community to help them pull children, including orphans, from the hot zone and give them refuge away from the theater of war.
The statement came after UN's children watchdog UNISEF announced earlier in the day that seven children were wounded in clashes in eastern Ukraine.
On Monday, Russia circulated a draft resolution on Ukraine humanitarian corridors to the 14 other members of the UN Security Council. It demanded that Kiev put an end to the ongoing military operation and created humanitarian corridors in order to allow the civilian population to leave.
