In trying to flee the war, this Ukrainian dad ended up in a Russian prison — and his kids in Moscow | 24CA News
In a few of Evgeny Mezhevoy’s darkest moments, like when he was interrogated and crammed into an overcrowded detention centre in Russian-occupied Donetsk, the one father imagined himself chatting with his three kids, who he says have been torn away from him at a checkpoint whereas attempting to flee the Russian assault on Mariupol.
“I talked to each one of them. I calmed them down,” Mezhevoy advised 24CA News in an interview from their two-bedroom house in Riga, Latvia, on the finish of November.
“I said I would come for them — and I’m still alive.”
Those inside conversations helped maintain him by way of weeks of worry and uncertainty, till the household might be reunited once more.
Mezhevoy, 39, was separated from his kids in April, when Russian troopers on the outskirts of Mariupol seen a Ukrainian army ID in his passport, which he acquired when he was employed as a mechanic.
He ultimately ended up in jail, whereas the youngsters have been placed on a airplane to Moscow with the promise of attending a camp.
“I did not want to go anywhere. I knew this was no summer camp of any kind,” stated Mezhevoy’s 13-year-old son, Matvey.
Matvey and his two sisters, Sviatoslava, 9, and Alexandra, 7, are amongst greater than 13,000 kids Ukraine says have been forcibly deported to Russia after it launched its invasion on Feb. 24.
Ukraine has accused Russia of stealing a few of its youngest and most weak. Russia, then again, is portray itself because the saviour of forgotten orphans.
Many of the youngsters reportedly despatched to Russia got here from orphanages within the occupied territories, however youngster welfare specialists say the overwhelming majority aren’t really orphans and have been beforehand positioned in care as a result of their dad and mom have been unable to take care of them.
Other kids, just like the Mezhevoys, ended up in Russia after being forcibly separated from their households by troopers at checkpoints, or by way of the chaos and violence of conflict.
Life in war-torn Mariupol
Ukrainian officers have urged the UN and the G20 to become involved. International organizations say there’s a nice want for an impartial physique to confirm Ukraine’s knowledge and work with each nations to find the youngsters and join them with family who’ve scattered over the previous 9 months.
After Russia launched its invasion, Mezhevoy and his kids spent weeks huddled in basements in Mariupol, attempting to remain alive as Russian troopers lay siege to the southern port metropolis.
Near the top of March, they moved right into a bunker in one of many metropolis’s hospitals, the place they sheltered with greater than 100 folks. By then, Mezehevoy says town was ruins and lifeless our bodies lay on the streets. The solely time they might enterprise exterior was to fetch water.
One day in early April, Mezhevoy says Russian troopers advised everybody staying within the hospital bunker that they must go away. While some selected to remain, Mezhevoy packed up his kids and boarded a minibus to a checkpoint.
It was there that troopers noticed his passport and ultimately led him away from the youngsters.
“It’s terrifying not knowing where your kids are,” he stated. “The unknown is the scariest.”
Over the subsequent month and half, he was interrogated about his hyperlinks to the Ukrainian army and requested whether or not he was affiliated with the Azov regiment, a unit that’s a part of Ukraine’s National Guard, and which Russia accuses of Nazi sympathies.
Mezhevoy stated at occasions the detained males needed to sleep standing up as a result of the rooms have been so crowded, and the insufferable warmth meant most stripped all the way down to their underwear.
He stated he was punched just a few occasions, when guards did not like how he answered questions. He advised CBC that among the different males had darkish bruises throughout their our bodies.
Sent to Moscow
In May, Mezhevoy was transferred to the Olenikva jail within the Donetsk area, which ultimately turned a holding cell for Ukrainian prisoners of conflict. It got here underneath assault in July; Ukraine and Russia blamed one another for the strikes, which killed dozens.
Mezhevoy had been launched by then. He stated that on May 26, the guards there all of the sudden advised him he may go, at which level he began making calls to trace down his kids.
He found that on the day after he was launched, they had been placed on a airplane to Moscow, after spending weeks at totally different places in Donetsk, together with a cultural centre and a hospital.
Mezhevoy’s son, Matvey, says that throughout their separation, he had no concept the place their father was. At one level, the youngsters put up a do-it-yourself poster saying they have been searching for their dad.
When they flew to Moscow, Matvey says they have been on a airplane with dozens of different kids.
They have been all despatched to what the Mezhevoy household described as a closely guarded web site simply exterior of Moscow. The camp was named Polyana.
The Mezhevoy kids advised CBC that they did not need to be there, however they did not describe any mistreatment, and stated they spent lots of time enjoyable.
They stated officers there organized actions for them, together with a dance social gathering, which the youngsters took a video of and shared with CBC.
Matvey stated that in their keep, they got a variety of medical examinations, together with blood checks, in addition to tablets that he believed have been nutritional vitamins.
Even although the separation was tough, Mezhevoy thought the youngsters have been higher off staying the place they have been, till he may discover a job and secure place to take them to.
Mezhevoy says Russian officers advised him that the kids could be introduced again to Donetsk in just a few weeks. But by mid-June, these plans modified, as intense combating was nonetheless underway.
On June 16, Mezhevoy acquired an pressing name from Matvey. He advised his father {that a} social employee stated the camp was ending, and that if their father did not choose them up quickly, they have been going to be briefly taken to an orphanage or positioned with a foster household.
Mezhevoy blames the Russian authorities for taking Ukrainian kids — however he does not blame strange Russians.
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It was Russian volunteers that helped him rapidly journey from jap Ukraine to Moscow to select up his kids. These volunteers even paid for a part of his journey.
After proving his id and filling out some paperwork, Mezhevoy was escorted into the camp for a tear-filled reunion along with his kids. It had been two months since he had final seen them on the Mariupol checkpoint.
The household then travelled to Riga, Latvia, the place they’ve settled for now.
Russia welcomes ‘orphans’
On Russian state tv and social media, officers have posted a number of movies of smiling Ukrainian kids getting off planes in Moscow and being greeted by Russian foster households holding balloon animals.
In May, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree simplifying the method of acquiring Russian citizenship for Ukrainian orphans and kids with out parental care.
On July 5, when the first group of kids turned residents, Russia’s kids’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, posted a extremely produced video of the ceremony.
“Now that the children have become Russian citizens, temporary guardianship can become permanent,” she wrote on her Telegram account.
Lvova- Belova, who has been sanctioned by Canada and different Western nations, didn’t reply to CBC’s request for an interview.
This fall, she introduced that she herself had adopted a teenage son from Mariupol. She later described in a state tv documentary that the second she met him, she simply felt “he belongs to me.”
Lvova-Belova has additionally posted photographs of kids with extreme well being circumstances being faraway from an orphanage in the southeastern metropolis of Kherson when it was nonetheless occupied by Russia forces.
Ukrainian officers at the moment are accumulating these sorts of photographs as proof.
“It is very hard to particularly know where a child is, especially when we are talking about deportation … by Russian military forces,” stated Maryna Lypovetska, who’s with the Ukrainian NGO Magnolia. The group seems for lacking kids, and has already acquired greater than 2,600 appeals this yr — greater than it had throughout its earlier twenty years of existence.
Lypovetska, who spoke to CBC by video name from Kyiv, stated Magnolia will get lots of messages about kids who went lacking in Russian-occupied areas.
When Lypovetska sees social media posts about Russian households adopting Ukrainian orphans, she says she’s infuriated, as lots of the kids aren’t actually orphans. Ukraine additionally banned all worldwide adoptions in the course of the conflict.
Even in the event that they don’t have any dad and mom, she says the children would possibly nonetheless produce other family.
“They have rights. They’re Ukrainian citizens,” she stated. “They have a right to reunite with their own families.”
Call for impartial investigation
According to Aagje Leven, secretary basic for Brussels-based Missing Children Europe, Russia’s actions to this point recommend a plan to take away the youngsters from Ukraine to be able to take away their nationality and id. She describes what is occurring not as “deportation” however “forced displacement.”
“I think there is quite a lot of work to still be done in terms of proving what is actually going on,” stated Leven, who says an impartial social gathering must confirm the variety of kids despatched to Russia, after which have a look at every particular person to see whether or not they have dad and mom or different relations.
Leven says “data and that level of proof” would assist in “demonstrating that this is actually a war crime, rather than just Russia saving children.”
Mezhovoy says a prosecutor from Ukraine has spoken with him about his case, and the youngsters have met with a psychologist. CBC reached out to the workplace of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, however did not obtain a response.
Mezhevoy believes his youngsters are dealing with the stress of the previous yr nicely, however they do nonetheless get terrified of loud noises and once they hear a airplane.
Sitting contained in the household’s house, his daughter Sviatoslava says she was nervous that if her father did not get to Moscow in time, they might be adopted by a Russian household completely.
“Nothing is short-term,” she proclaimed whereas sitting on a high bunk, a reference to Russian claims of short-term guardianship.
Mezhevoy shakes his head when he’s requested in regards to the hundreds of Ukrainian kids who’ve apparently been despatched to Russia.
“It is wrong,” he stated. “I don’t understand — are there really so few homeless children in Russia, that they are taking ours?”
With information from Corinne Seminoff and Irene Shcherbakova
