MOSCOW, July 13 /ITAR-TASS/. The official reports say from the beginning of the hostilities in Ukraine killed have been eleven children, and the youngest one was only five months old, press service of Russian children’s ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said on Sunday.
“In the zone of the military actions in the country’s south-east are several orphanages, from where children have not been evacuated due to an absolute absence of humanitarian corridors and since Kiev’s authorities have refused to offer options for evacuation of civilians: the elderly, women and children,” the press service quotes the ombudsman as saying.
He continued saying that Kiev’s military had destroyed the Topolek orphanage, damaged a specialised school in the city of Kramatorsk, bombarded children’s department of the hospital in Slavyansk and a kindergarten.
Within two months, Russia has accepted over 22,000 children, where there are parentless children who entered Russia together with fosters or jointly with foster families.
“We do not differ people, we are not asking an ethnicity or political and religious views of those people. We are welcoming everybody escaping violence and destruction,” he said.
The children’s ombudsman continued saying in the complicated humanitarian situation, made up by Kiev’s authorities as they are not willing to settle the conflict peacefully and refuse to organise humanitarian corridors or to open humanitarian missions, to accept humanitarian aid from Russia - the most unprotected are orphans and parentless children.
“Especially so in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, where with the lack of financing every second they are exposed to life threatening. In Ukraine now are over 90,000 orphans, and the civil war launched by Kiev’s politicians every day causes only new suffering, pain of losses and adds new orphans,” he said.
The Russian ombudsman calls on Ukraine’s President Pyotr Poroshenko to stop killing own people.
“Protect those who need protection most - Ukraine’s orphans. If you are unable to do so - let them out to Russia. We shall help the miserable and abandoned children, we shall receive them as our own, we shall give to them everything necessary and will find new families for them. Orphans should not be held hostage to your military and political ambitions,” he said in conclusion.