There were no fire units, no emergency services.

She climbed the stairs at her son’s, shouting, calling for her family, but no one responded. “There was a man lying in the entryway, a neighbor from the third floor,” she said. She was by herself her husband was disabled and could barely walk. It took around 15 minutes for Tolstokorova to get outside of her own home and get to the front door of her son’s building. I was screaming in the street,” Tolstokorova told BuzzFeed News while sitting in her same old apartment, whose structure survived despite the damage. Tolstokorova last saw her son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter, Nastya, on March 12, hours before she was awakened by bombs dropping at 4 a.m. “In violation of international humanitarian law and basic standards of humanness, Russia is engaged in state-organised kidnapping of children,” the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. At least 5,600 children have been forcibly deported to Russia, Deputy Interior Minister Kateryna Pavlichenko reported on July 29.Ī provision in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child bars “the illicit transfer and non-return of children abroad” and the UN’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide forbids “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” At least 200,000 Ukrainian children are currently missing, according to former Human Rights Commissioner of the Ukrainian Parliament Liudmyla Denisova, though the number may be an undercount as it doesn’t include kids without living family members to file a report. While many kids in Ukraine’s orphanages were there before Russia’s invasion, an untold number have ended up at these facilities amid the chaos of war and may have living relatives able to take them in. And we feel that we do see that this is happening,” said Aagje Leven, secretary general at Missing Children Europe, the leading organization investigating disappearing minors in Ukraine. “One of the elements of a genocide is taking children from one group and turning them into the other group. While advocates have accused Russia of violating Geneva Convention and UN standards that prohibit transferring children across state lines, Tolstokorova’s experience interacting with Russia’s Commissioner for Children's Rights offers one of the first on-the-ground accounts of how this process plays out. Around 30 of them told BuzzFeed News that they fear this trend is part of Vladimir Putin's larger strategy to empty the territories his military forces are trying to occupy and take control of the younger population by deporting them to territories that are already under Russian control. The transport of Ukrainian orphans to Russia has raised concerns among social workers, lawyers, and officials at local and international organizations. Lvova-Belova’s office did not respond to a list of questions for this story. Arina and 107 other children would go up for adoption in Russia, where they will get citizenship and the adults who take them in will receive a stipend more than four times the minimum wage. 20, four days prior to the official beginning of the war.

She was a girl named Arina, one of the more than 200 children and adults taken from an orphanage in Amvrosiivka, a city in the occupied territory of the Donetsk region, to Kursk, Russia, on Feb. A representative from the office said that the girl in the video was not Nastya. Her persistence paid off: Lvova-Belova’s office responded, though not with the news Tolstokorova had hoped for. 'Russia don't take our children away from us, we are their living relatives,' she wrote. Tolstokorova posted dozens of comments in the following hours, on VKontakte and Telegram, where the Children's Ombudsman also shared the video. “For the love of all that is holy, give me my star!” “Dear Maria, my granddaughter is there, I recognized her,” Tolstokorova commented on the post. “Thirteen little peas, in identical suits, were waiting for us at the porch of the foster home to go to Russia to be with foster moms and dads,” stated the caption on the video, posted on VKontakte, known as “the Russian Facebook.” “By the end of the week, 108 orphans from Donbass who received Russian citizenship will have parents.” Tolstokorova hadn’t seen Nastya since their hometown of Mariupol, in eastern Ukraine, was bombed four months ago. The video showed a large group of little children getting off of buses and being greeted by their new adoptive parents. Tatiana Tolstokorova, 56, was sure she recognized Nastya, her missing 3-year-old granddaughter, in a video posted on July 14 on social media by the presidential commissioner for children's rights in Russia, Maria Lvova-Belova.

Dear maria count me in