Russians were suspected of seizing orphan children and sending them to Russia, so staff at the children’s regional hospital in Kherson city began fabricating orphans’ medical records to make it appear like they were too ill to move.
“We deliberately wrote false information that the children were sick and could not be transported,” said Dr. Olga Pilyarska, head of intensive care. “We were scared that would find out … we decided that we would save the children at any cost.”
At the hospital in Kherson, staff invented diseases for 11 abandoned babies under their care, so they wouldn’t have to give them to the orphanage where they knew they’d be given Russian documents and potentially taken away. One baby had “pulmonary bleeding”, another “uncontrollable convulsions” and another needed “artificial ventilation,” said Pilyarska of the fake records.
While Sahaidak managed to stave off the Russians, not all children were as lucky. In the orphanage in Kherson — where the hospital would have sent the 11 babies — some 50 children were evacuated in October and allegedly taken to Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, a security guard at the institution and neighbors told The Associated Press.
Earlier this year, The Associated Press reported that Russia is trying to give thousands of Ukrainian children to Russian families for foster care or adoption. The AP found that officials have deported Ukrainian children to Russia or Russian-held territories without consent, lied to them that they weren’t wanted by their parents, used them for propaganda, and given them Russian families and citizenship.
Russian children’s rights ombudswoman Maria Lvova-Belova personally oversaw moving hundreds of orphans from Russian-controlled regions of Ukraine for adoption by Russian families. She has claimed that some of the children were offered an opportunity to return to Ukraine but refused to do so. Her statement couldn’t be independently verified.
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