Children from the Shebekinsky and Graivoronsky districts, located near the border with Ukraine, will be taken to Voronezh. The governor of the Belgorod region Vyacheslav Gladkov announced the evacuation of children in his Telegram channel.

“We are starting today to take children out of the Shebekinsky and Grayvoronsky districts. Today, the first 300 children will be sent to Voronezh,” the official said.

Gladkov announced the start of the removal of children the next morning after the next shelling of Shebekino. As a result of a night strike from the Ukrainian side from a multiple launch rocket system (MLRS), four people were injured.

Windows were broken in a number of multi-apartment and private houses, several facades and roofs were damaged. One shop burned down, 12 cars were damaged.

On May 30, 155 “arrivals” were registered in the Shebekinsky district in a day, 48 shells of the Ukrainian Armed Forces hit Shebekino. Another 42 shells from the Ukrainian side were fired at the village of Novaya Tavolzhanka, 39 at the village of Murom.

On May 29, Governor of the Belgorod Region Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on his Telegram channel that the Armed Forces of Ukraine fired on the region more than 300 times in a day. According to the data he provided, Graivoronsky urban district was fired upon 101 times, Shebekinsky – 116 times, Belgorodsky – 63 times, and seven shells were fired at the villages of Lozovoe and Solntsevka.

The settlement of Dragunskoye “was attacked twice by drones, IEDs were dropped”, and the village of Zhuravlevka was fired upon by artillery and AGS 36 times.

“There are no casualties and no damage,” Gladkov also wrote. In addition, according to him, the Ukrainian military shelled the Volokonovsky district 23 times in a day.

Evacuation of children

On February 18, children began to be evacuated from the DPR and LPR to Russia, first of all, children from orphanages and boarding schools were taken out.

June 19, 2022 Russia‘s Interdepartmental Coordination Headquarters for Humanitarian Response reported that since the beginning of the military operation, the Russian side has taken 307,423 children to Russia from Ukraine, the DPR and the LPR. The total number of evacuated Ukrainians then reached 1,936,911 people.

The Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly accused the Russian leadership of illegally exporting their citizens to Russia. “He takes out both adults and children by force. These are orphans from orphanages. And kids and parents. And children separated from their families,” President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said in early June 2022.

The Russian Defense Ministry accused Kyiv of disrupting a number of humanitarian corridors and emphasized that Ukrainians were evacuating voluntarily.

On October 24, State Duma deputy Nina Ostanina turned to Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin with a request to consider the possibility of evacuating children whose parents decided not to leave the border areas of the Belgorod Region.

According to Ostanina, children need to be provided with full-time education and placed in recreation and recreation organizations of federal significance – for example, in Artek, Orlyonok or sanatoriums in Moscow and the Moscow region. The further fate of the appeal was not reported by the media.

On March 17, the Pre-trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, whose jurisdiction Moscow does not recognize, issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova.

According to the ICC, these persons may be involved in “war crimes”, which consist in the illegal deportation and transfer of the population, in particular children, “from the occupied territories of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”

On April 4, 2023, the Ukrainian authorities announced the forced evacuation of children from 21 settlements in Donbass, the Ministry of Reintegration of Ukraine reported.

“Members of the coordination headquarters unanimously supported the decision of the Donetsk Regional Military Administration to announce the mandatory evacuation of 126 children from 21 settlements in Donbass, where the security situation remains critical,” the message says. It is noted that the forced evacuation is carried out by the National Police.