30,000 children to be deported to Russian-occupied Crimea 'illegally'
Oct 08, 2022
Kyiv [Ukraine], October 8 : At least 30,000 children are likely to be deported to the Russian-occupied Crimea, including other regions by the Russian proxies from Kherson, media reports said.
The children will be deported from the occupied regions of Kherson to the Krasnodar and Stavropol regions as well as Russian-occupied Crimea, The Kyiv Independent reported quoting Russia's proxy in occupied Kherson Oblast, Volodymyr Saldo on Saturday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently signed laws to formally take over the four regions Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson into the "Russian Federation."
"Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed four federal constitutional laws on the entry of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions into the Russian Federation," said the lower house of Russian parliament Wednesday citing government documents.
Earlier on October 6, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a statement that Russia had forcibly deported about 1.6 million Ukrainians from the occupied territories, The Kyiv Independent reported.
"Many of them went through the terrible filtration camps of the occupiers, where they were abused and intimidated," the Ukrainian media portal reported quoting Zelenskyy.
In another statement, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said, "Hundreds of thousands of illegally deported Ukrainians are children."
Recently, a key bridge that connects the Crimean Peninsula with mainland Russia was gutted in a fire sparked by a car bomb, authorities in Moscow said on Saturday.
Russia's RIA state news agency said that a fuel tank was on fire on the Kerch Bridge, while Ukraine media reported an explosion.
The bridge was opened in 2018 by President Vladimir Putin, four years after Moscow annexed Crimea and was designed to link the peninsula to Russia's transport network.
The 19-kilometre (11.8 miles) bridge, which runs across the Kerch Strait and connects Crimea with mainland Russia, consists of a railway and vehicle sections. It became fully operational in 2020.
As per some media reports, the Crimean bridge is a key target for Ukrainian forces who have been attacking Russian logistics. Notably, Russia recently annexed four regions of Ukraine - Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
The war between Russia and Ukraine appears to be entering a new phase after Kyiv dealt a big blow to Moscow's grip after it recaptured 2,400 square kilometres of territory in the Kherson region in the south of the country "since the beginning of the full-scale war," a senior Ukrainian official said Friday, reported CNN.
