A Ukrainian woman who travelled to Russia hoping to arrange the repatriation of her godson and his brother from Russian-occupied Kherson province was arrested, interrogated for two days and threatened with being sent to a penal colony before being deported to Belarus.
The detention of Olga Guruli was initially reported by Russian media outlets who wrongly suggested she was an employee of Save Ukraine, an NGO that has been helping relatives recover children illegally deported by Russia.
The Guardian understands that Guruli was part of a group of mothers who had travelled through Russia trying to reach Russian-occupied Kherson province in the hope of being reunited with their children.
Her reported detention follows mounting international concern over Russia’s policy of “kidnapping” Ukrainian children in areas that it controls and moving them to Russia.
According to the Ukrainian government, 16,226 children have been deported to Russia, of whom 10,513 have been located, and more than 300 have returned. Some fear the numbers of missing could be an underestimate.
While thousands of children have been forcibly deported to Russia – an alleged war crime for which the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is being investigated by the international criminal court (ICC) – some parents who have travelled to Russia, mainly women, have been able to retrieve their children.
Individuals and organisations, including Save Ukraine, have been able to repatriate over 300 children in this way.
Unaccompanied children, some of whom were orphaned when their parents were killed during the siege of Mariupol, have disappeared into a Kremlin-sanctioned system now under investigation by the ICC.
According to Save Ukraine, Guruli was detained a week ago while travelling through Russia.
In a video posted online by the Russian news agency Ria Novosti, Guruli explained she came to Russia to take custody of two children in Henichesk in Kherson region, adding that after she had registered guardianship she had planned to take the children to Germany.
According to Save Ukraine spokesperson Olga Erokhina, Guruli is now outside Russia and is safe but had not been able to bring the boys back with her.
Guruli’s arrest and questioning is the latest sinister twist in the saga of Ukraine’s kidnapped children and the public disclosure of the arrest appears designed to discourage already fearful Ukrainian parents from travelling to Russia to look for missing children.
This month the Russian government said it had placed the British prosecutor of the ICC on a wanted list in an act of retribution after the Hague-based court issued an arrest warrant for Putin.
It said Russia’s interior ministry was seeking to detain Karim Khan, who has served as the ICC prosecutor since 2021.
It also appears to confirm the fears of Mykola Kuleba, a former children’s ombudsman in Ukraine and now the chief executive of Save Ukraine, that efforts to retrieve Ukrainian children were becoming increasingly fraught.
Two mothers, whom the Guardian also interviewed recently about going to Russia to find their daughters, described a “terrifying” experience as they travelled through Poland, Belarus and Russia to find their children and bring them home.
Using the circuitous and potentially hazardous route is the only way many families have of finding their children, sometimes assisted by volunteers.
In an interview with the Guardian, published earlier this week, Kuleba described his fears for Ukrainian children who had been forcibly deported to Russia.
“It’s not only unaccompanied children who have been sent to camps in Russia, and kids kidnapped from boarding schools and orphanages. We’re not sure how many we are talking about. In some cases we are talking about children who were in occupied areas while the rest of their family stayed in Ukrainian-controlled areas, and those families have lost connection with their children.
“Now they are afraid they will never see them again. Then we need to talk about the children who are now in Russia who we know nothing about. Children whose parents have been imprisoned after being separated at the filtration camps or whose parents have been killed, in particular during the siege of Mariupol.
“We are most concerned for those children who have been missing for six months and more where Russian authorities have prepared birth certificates and passports and sent them to foster families.”
• This article was amended on 31 May 2023 to correct the spelling of Henichesk.
