Dmytro Lubinets, the Ombudsman, has provided law enforcement with information about the departure abroad of close relatives of Kyiv officials who used orphaned children for this purpose. This was announced by the Kyiv City Prosecutor's Office.
According to the investigation, the heads of the Service for Children and Family Affairs and the Center for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation of Children No. 1 organized the departure abroad of their relatives, who were used as escorts during the evacuation of children. Law enforcement officers will verify information about whether all escorts returned to Ukraine and will provide a legal assessment in accordance with the law.
In March 2022, during hostilities near Kyiv, 68 students from the Center for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation of Children No. 1 were evacuated to the German city of Wuppertal. Among them were orphans, children deprived of parental care, and those in difficult life circumstances. They were accompanied by 20 adults.
In 2024, Lubinets representatives conducted monitoring visits to Germany to check the conditions of Ukrainian children. However, they were not allowed into the camp in Wuppertal due to the lack of Ukrainian escorts. The German side reported that 55 children had been there since the beginning of the evacuation, and the whereabouts of the remaining 13 remained unknown.
The Ombudsman's Office conducted unscheduled inspections at the Service for Children and Family Affairs and the Center for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation of Children No. 1 in Kyiv. It turned out that the management did not have information about the conditions of the children's stay in Germany. It also turned out that among the escorts there were people who had become employees of the institutions just the day before the evacuation or were not employed at all. Among them were close relatives of the heads of the Center and the Service, who resigned from their positions after going abroad and did not return to Ukraine.
The case is being investigated for signs of illegal trafficking across the state border of persons of draft age by prior conspiracy of a group of persons under Part 2 of Article 332 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, which may result in up to 7 years of imprisonment.
Since the start of the full-scale invasion, the Russian army has killed 554 children in Ukraine and injured another 1,419. However, nine children and their families were recently returned to controlled territory from the temporarily occupied Kherson region.
