Russian Emergency Minister’s wife involved in abducting Ukrainian children, investigation shows

Elena Milskaya, the wife of Russia’s Minister of Emergency Situations Alexander Kurenkov, is actively involved in the abduction of Ukrainian children, according to the results of an investigation by the Russian publication Projekt on Aug. 21.

Milskaya is the head of the Russian Archangel Michael Foundation, and chair of the board of trustees of the National Center for Missing and Affected Children.

Projekt’s investigation states that Milskaya “advocates for traditional family values, Internet censorship, stigmatizes LGBT, Western values and secular education,” while receiving billions of rubles in income.

Milskaya and Kurenkov are officially married although this is not publicly reported, Projekt said. The journalists also managed to find a document where they were mentioned as husband and wife.

Read also: Ukraine returns home 14-year-old girl abducted by Russia, says ombudsman

Marrying Kurenkov paved the way for Milskaya’s “great financial and political prospects,” reads the article.

The Russian “philanthropist” has been directly involved in the abduction of Ukrainian children since 2014, when children from orphanages were stolen from Russian-occupied Donetsk.

A photo posted by the minister’s wife in August 2022 helped identify children from Donetsk Preschool orphanage No. 1. Some of them have been taken one and a half thousand kilometers away, to the town of Uchaly, in the Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia. Four children have been offered up for adoption in the region.

In October 2022, before the Ukrainian military liberated Kherson, the “volunteers” of Milskaya’s center, together with the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations, took part in the abduction of children from Kherson Oblast, transporting them from Russian-occupied Crimea to Russia’s Krasnodar Krai.

Volodymyr Sahaydak, director of the Center for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation in the village of Stepanivka, Kherson Oblast, told journalists that the children had been taken away by force.

Read also: British Ambassador reveals reasons behind Russia’s abduction of Ukrainian children

“I was told that if there was any resistance, soldiers would come, pack us together with the children and take us away,” Sahaydak said.

“I don’t think we can do anything against the assault rifles. Therefore, we had nothing to do. I was told that the children were taken to Henichesk but they lied. They were taken to the Crimea, to the Krasnodar Krai, to the city of Anapa.”

In December 2022, Milskaya announced the establishment of 10 regional centers dedicated to the “military and sports education, and patriotic training of youth.” The training is designed primarily for schoolchildren aged 14-18.

The students of this program will reportedly receive lessons on the basics of fire, engineering, physical, and psychological training, drone warfare instruction, and first aid lessons. The project received RUB 2.7 billion ($29.7 million) from the Russian government reserve fund.

Russia’s abduction of Ukrainian children – What’s known

On March 17, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Russiandictator Vladimir Putin on charges of committing war crimes in connection with the abduction of Ukrainian children to Russia.

On April 27, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a resolutionrecognizing the forced transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia as genocide.

According to Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights, the Russians have kidnapped 20,000 children from the occupied territories of Ukraine and are holding about 6,000 in “re-education camps.”

He said that the forced transfer of Ukrainian children and prisoners of war is taking place through the territory of Belarus.

Read also: Russia repeatedly violated rights of deported Ukrainian children – OSCE report

In total, according to the European Parliament, the number of Ukrainian children illegally abducted by Russia may reach 16,000-300,000. MEPs believe that Russians began stealing Ukrainian children back in 2014, after the occupation of Crimea and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.

On July 19, the head of the Belarusian Red Cross, Dzmitry Shevtsov, admitted that his agency was involved in the forced displacement of Ukrainian children.

On July 20, the ICRC announced that it had launched an investigation into the activities of Shevtsov and its Belarusian office for involvement in the abduction of children from Ukraine.

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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine