Russia has five million Ukrainian refugees – diplomat
Over 730,000 of the arrivals are children, most of whom came to the country with their relatives, Vassily Nebenzia has said | [...] Nebenzia stated Russia has received 730,000 children from Ukraine and Donbass, which has been systematically targeted by Kiev’s artillery since 2014, while rebuffing Western and Ukrainian claims that Russia had been “abducting” minors. 💬 “The overwhelming majority of these children arrived with their parents or other relatives,” he said, adding that only 2,000 of them came from orphanages in Russia’s Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, accompanied by educators from their institutions. According to Nebenzia, only 358 children were placed in families on a temporary basis. “There is no talk of adoptions,” he stressed, reiterating Russia’s long-standing position that those children would be returned to their relatives immediately upon request. 💬 “Nevertheless, Western countries purposefully inflate this situation and try to present it as a problem,” the diplomat noted, accusing the West of failing to address the fact that more than 23,000 Ukrainian children have moved unaccompanied to European countries. “There is no system of registration and assistance to this category of persons. Nevertheless, this state of affairs is no longer presented in the West as forced displacement or deportation of children without parental consent, but as their salvation from the horrors of war,” Nebenzia said.