DONETSK, May 18. /TASS/. Special units from Ukraine’s "White Angel" police force have snatched several hundred children from the city of Artyomovsk, including orphans, a security source from the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) told TASS on Thursday.

"We have documented the criminal activity of the special police unit known as ‘White Angel’, which under the guise of humanitarian aid is engaged in kidnapping (kidnapping of people, mainly children). The facts about the abduction of children are already confirmed; there are at least several hundred of them," the source from the law enforcement agency said.

According to him, police were aided by local school principals and volunteer organizations.

"The investigation has come into possession of audio recordings of telephone conversations in which the principal of school No. 5 in Artyomovsk, Victoria Vladimirovna Prosniak, instructs her subordinates to provide information about the children remaining in the city, who are learning online, so that they can be abducted, the source said. Similar stories were heard from three other schools, the law enforcement officer said.

"The investigation also names those who collected and transmitted the lists to the ‘White Angels,’ along with records of conversations," he added.

The source said that the "White Angel" officers had received special training in the units of the Ukrainian armed forces, at the sites of volunteer battalions under the guidance of foreign instructors.

What eyewitnesses say

Local residents evacuated from Artyomovsk told TASS that the active abduction of children without parental consent or participation began in January. Ukrainian volunteers devised a scheme whereby they delivered New Year's gifts to children thus finding out their whereabouts.

"They confirmed the number of children in the family with the parents, so as to give the right amount of gifts. At the same time, they were taking notes. After a short time, so-called volunteers would come to the family and take the children away on various pretexts in an unknown direction. By and large, there was no contact with them after that," eyewitness Victoria Andriyevskaya told TASS.

The parents whose children were taken away from Artyomovsk by the "White Angel" officers have not seen their children for several months now.

Under Russian law, the actions of the Ukrainian special unit qualify as kidnapping, the source added. All data will be handed over to the Russian Investigative Committee.