Yermak: Another 16 Ukrainian children returned from occupation

Another 16 children were returned to the territory controlled by the Ukrainian government, Head of the President's Office Andriy Yermak has said.

"Within the framework of the initiative of the President of Ukraine Bring Kids Back UA, we managed to save 16 children from the temporarily occupied territories. They spent years under the pressure of the occupation authorities, in fear and humiliation, but today they are already safe on free Ukrainian land," he said in the Telegram channel on Monday.

Yermak told several stories about the fate of the children. Among the rescued is a girl who constantly feared for her mother. The woman was kept in a basement for three days without food and water only because the child's father serves in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Another teenager, without the knowledge of his parents, was taken to the military registration and enlistment office instead of school and put on military registration. A two-year-old girl with a high fever was not allowed to go to the hospital by the Russian military, and her mother was forced to carry her across a pontoon bridge in the dark

On July 25, Daria Zarivna, advisor to the head of the President's Office of Ukraine, reported that 1,458 children had already been returned as part of the initiative of the President of Ukraine Bring Kids Back UA, but more than 1.6 million Ukrainian children remain under the control of the enemy, the office said.

After that, over 40 more children, teenagers and young men, as well as some of their parents, returned from the occupied territory to Ukraine as part of the initiative Bring Kids Back UA.