MOSCOW, August 17. /TASS/. Five children from Russia who have found themselves in a combat zone in Iraq will soon return home, Head of Russia’s North Caucasian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, wrote on his Instagram account on Thursday.
According to Kadyrov, he met with Ziyad Sabsabi, a deputy chairman of the international committee of Russia’s Federation Council upper parliament house to discuss the problem of return of Russian children taken by their parents to combat areas in the Middle East.
"Today, I set further tasks for the Chechen leader’s representative in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa, Senator Ziyad Sabsabi. First of all, I suggested the area of search for children be expanded," he wrote. "He said he has data on 28 children from Russia. They are from different regions. The package of document for the return of five children is almost ready."
According to Sabsabi, some of the children are staying at military prisons with a surviving parent. Kadyrov stressed that the problem of the return of Russian children from Iraq and Syria is of "major political, social and humanitarian importance."
On August 4, Kadyrov wrote on his Telegram channel that his representatives had visited the Al-Salihiya orphanage in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, where six presumably Russian children had been found. Kadyrov also said that there are 35 to 40 other Russian nationals and up to 100 citizens of the CIS countries in other orphanages in Baghdad, as well as about the same number in the Mosul area and Kurdistan. Kadyrov wrote on Instagram on August 10 that family members of four children who were previously discovered in an Iraqi orphanage had turned up. These people are from Dagestan. He said that Ziyad Sabsabi, a native to Syria’s Aleppo, would soon go to Iraq to provide assistance to the Russian children.