SHCHELKOVO /Moscow Region/, October 16. /TASS/. A plane transporting 27 Russian children from Syria landed early on Friday at the Chkalovsky airport near Moscow, the press office of the Russian children’s rights commissioner, Anna Kuznetsova, said.
"Overnight to October 16, a Russian Defense Ministry plane, which delivered 27 children from Syria to their homeland, landed at Moscow’s Chkalovsky airport," the press service said.
Later, Kuznetsova told reporters the children, evacuated to their homeland from Syria’s Al Hawl refugee camp, will be sent to their relatives in five regions after spending some time in quarantine.
"After a medical examination and quarantine, they will be handed over to close relatives. 17 children will go to Dagestan, four - to Penza region, and two to each of the following regions - Tyumen Region, Volgograd Region and also Chechnya," she said.
The children are aged between two and 13 years. It was the third mission to evacuate children from the war-torn country after a pause caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic. The ombudsperson said that talks about the fourth flight are already under way.
"We hope very much they would succeed, because more than 70 children remain there with all documents ready. If we are in time with the next visit, documents for 27 more children will be issued," she said.
The effort to locate and bring back underage Russians from Iraq and Syria was launched in the summer of 2017. During a visit to Damascus by Russian Commissioner for Children's Rights Anna Kuznetsova in September 2019, an agreement on humanitarian cooperation in this sphere was reached at her working meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad. A special intergovernmental commission was set up for the purpose at the Office of the Russian Commissioner for Children's Rights.
In the course of the intergovernmental commission's work, a total of 224 children have been returned from hotspots of armed conflicts in the Middle East - 122 from Iraq and 102 from Syria.