Photo: Maria Lvova-Belova / Telegram

Russia has returned nine children to Ukraine with the help of Qatari mediators, Russia’s Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova announced on Thursday.

“The group includes eight boys aged 12 to 17 and one girl aged 17. She had been living with her grandmother in Crimea, but wanted to reunite with her mother in Kyiv, so of course, we helped,” Lvova-Belova said in a post on Telegram.

Lvova-Belova added that to date a total of 80 children from 62 different families had been handed over to Ukraine, while Ukraine had returned 13 children to Russia who had relatives in the country. She also thanked the Qatari mediators for their help in reuniting families.

On Wednesday four children aged 3–14 years old were handed over to the Russian authorities in the Belarusian capital Minsk, where they were reunited with their families before attending an official ceremony celebrating their return at the Qatari embassy in Moscow.

Lvova-Belova told Russian business daily RBC on Wednesday that a further 18 children were due to be reunited with their families in Russia, eight of whom currently reside in the EU.

Ukraine has accused Russia of unlawfully deporting over 19,000 Ukrainian children since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, a claim the Russian authorities deny.

In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Lvova-Belova for their role in the “unlawful deportation of children” from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia, which it considers to be a war crime.