7 Jun, 2023 13:10
Artyomovsk locals reveal how Ukrainian forces targeted civilians and took children during the 'battle for Bakhmut'
Kiev’s troops allegedly did what the country's officials, and their propaganda machine, have accused Russia of doing
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‘White Angels’ taking children
Apart from being deliberately targeted by Ukrainian forces, some Artyomovsk civilians claim they also faced another threat – Ukrainian operatives abducting children. According to four people we spoke with, Ukrainian military police tried to take away local kids.
They call these people
“White Angels.” These are special police crews that Ukrainian sources describe as evacuation teams. In early April, Ukraine’s Ministry of Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories (which is what Kiev calls the formerly Ukrainian regions which opted to become part of Russia: the Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, as well as Crimea)
announced that 126 children would be “
mandatorily evacuated” in 21 unspecified localities of the Donetsk region.
https://www.rt.com/russia/576632-artemovsk-bakhmut-battle/
This is, apparently, what these crews are doing – even against the wishes of the parents. According to the ministry,
“evacuated children accompanied by one of the parents or a legal representative will be provided free shelter, social guarantees, humanitarian and psychological assistance.”
However, not all families want to leave their homes with the
“evacuators.” Ukrainian media report that some parents instead choose to
hide their children from the White Angels, and in these cases the police teams try to
convince them to leave.
The locals we spoke to tell a different story – that of children being taken away with or without their own or their parents’ consent.
“
They were hunting our kids, and we were hiding them around the buildings,” a man named Evgeny said.
“We had been hiding our kids for a whole month. It was freezing cold. My wife was pregnant then. Another boy was hiding with his mom.”
He and Lyubov spoke of a district of Artyomovsk where people went to get humanitarian aid. According to them, a 14-year-old boy was outside while his parents sought aid.
“Some people came and took him away. The neighbors were shouting at them. And they said, 'He’s not supervised, he's not being cared for properly.' And that was it. We don't know his fate now.”
Sergey said he and his wife had been hiding their own son.
“They were taking children away. They would come at 6pm, sometimes at 10pm. They were looking for one particular boy in one basement, so they would turn up there.” The men he saw wore black shoes and camouflage.
Some even believe the
“evacuators” are neither police nor volunteers.
“They called themselves volunteers, but they were not, they were the SBU [Ukraine’s successor to the Soviet KGB] or maybe some other organization that collects information,” Vladimir said.
“They had a list of people, they knew who lived where and how many people were there.”
“Volunteers came in a car, gave out some boxes, gathered information, and then with this information, people in uniform would come running and looking for children.”
https://www.rt.com/russia/577090-ukraine-airfields-hit-russian-strikes/
In Néant's
interview with Yulia, the mother spoke of a boy who the
“evacuators” had been seeking. Yulia said,
“It was February and the White Angels started coming, then other groups came. They said that the Supreme Rada had decreed that we had no right to be here and that we were exposing our child to active hostilities. There's a boy next door, his name is Maksim. Five times they came to see him, they wanted to find him.”
Vladimir confirmed this.
“The family lived in a dormitory, in a basement. They made raids on them, they came in the morning, at lunchtime, in the evening. They insisted on taking the children away without their parents' consent.”
More recently, an
11-year-old girl spoke of how White Angels – who introduced themselves as military police – came to the basement she was sheltering in with a photo of her, looking for her, and saying they needed to take her away, because “Russia killed her mother.” The girl said they came back looking for her a week later. Her mother was, the girl said, alive, and with her.
According to earlier testimony by an Artyomovsk civilian, cited by
RIA, children were being taken to resorts and recreational camps on Ukrainian territory.
“If the parents consented, they could go with their children. If not, the children were taken away.”
These testimonies could be the first of many revealing how civilians had to hide their children to prevent Ukraine from abducting them – which is, ironically, exactly what Kiev has accused Russian forces of doing.
