Ukrainian law enforcement officers have identified more than 5.6 thousand children who were illegally taken to Russia by the invaders, said Deputy Interior Minister Kateryna Pavlichenko.

“To date, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been forcibly deported to the aggressor country.. According to the National Information Bureau, more than 5,600 children forcibly deported to Russia have already been identified.. The actual figure is higher,” she noted..

In addition to identification, a mechanism is also being worked out for the return of little Ukrainians home..

These issues are dealt with by the Ukrainian task force based on Europol, whose goal is to protect temporarily displaced persons in Europe and the aggressor countries - Russia and Belarus.

The Austrian-chaired group included law enforcement officers from Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania and Ukraine. Law enforcement officers from the Baltic States and Finland participate in the meetings.

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Earlier, Ukrainian presidential commissioner for children's rights Daria Gerasimchuk said that the Russian Federation illegally deported more than 180,000 children, including about 2,000 orphans, to the temporarily occupied territories..

Some of the children were sent to Russia.

By decree of the President of the Russian Federation, Ukrainian orphans began to be given Russian citizenship under the " And in the temporarily occupied territories of the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, newborns are forcibly recorded as “citizens of the Russian Federation”.

In fact, the Russian Federation, in violation of international humanitarian law and elementary standards of humanity, is engaged in state-organized abduction of children.