“They were traded for tanks.” How children are taken away from Ukrainian refugees in Europe | In the world | Policy

There is no common database of Ukrainians whose children were taken away or deprived of parental rights in European countries. Lawyers and human rights activists who help refugees in courts speak of about 80 such cases per year. But this, of course, is not statistics at all, and there are many more such stories. The most striking thing is that Ukrainian officials and diplomats are in no hurry to help their citizens.

“Inadequate” mother

Elena Kovaleva from Dnipro (Dnepropetrovsk) with a 4-year-old son Richard I came to Germany in March, a year ago. eldest son Alexander (16 years old) stayed in Ukraine. For almost two months, Elena and her child lived in a family with other refugees, and then moved to a camp with more comfortable conditions. But a couple of days later, representatives of the German guardianship came there. “Richard was taken right out of the sandbox,” says Kovaleva. It turned out that the former neighbors had written a denunciation against her. They say that he looks after the child poorly, feeds little and overreacts emotionally to everyday difficulties. This was enough for the boy to spend 10 days in an orphanage, and then went to live with a certain family.

What actually happened between the refugees and why the denunciation appeared, no one knows for sure. Given the circumstances, domestic scandals and squabbles with refugees occur regularly. Some start drinking out of stress. But no such facts came up in court. It took place two weeks after the sandbox story, and Elena was allowed to see her son once every 8 months. “The second court session took place 4 months later, and they told me that my parental rights were temporarily suspended. After that, I naturally burst into tears – to which the court said that I needed to undergo a psychiatric examination and prove my adequacy, otherwise the child would not be returned to me, ”says the woman. The lawyer advised her not to register in a German psychiatric clinic, otherwise there would definitely be a diagnosis. He sent her home to collect certificates, characteristics, etc. The court did not like this option.

For 7 months, Elena saw Richard only 3 times. Senior Alexander moved to live with her. Now they want to take him away. The two of them went to visit Richard, but the mother was not allowed in, they said that only Sasha could meet with his brother. “I started to break into the room where he was. The juvenile services called the police and said that I had inflicted minor bodily harm on them. Because of this, a criminal case was opened against me, on the basis of which they want to take away their eldest son, ”Elena admits. The consulate refused to help her, saying that she had issued refugee status and now all this is the jurisdiction of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Talk to your son only through Google Translate

This behavior of Ukrainian diplomats has become the norm. They either directly say that they will not help, or they are just playing for time and ignoring calls. So it was with Oksana Buratevich from Irpin.

She arrived in Germany at the end of February 2022 with her 9 year old son Savely. “I gave birth at almost 40, invested everything in the child,” she says. A month later, the boy began to complain of abdominal pain. Oksana went to German doctors. Several months of trials did not bring results. They could not make a diagnosis to the guy, they advised him to drink painkillers and walk more. Oksana spat and went to examine the child in Ukraine. Erosive ulcerative gastritis was found there, and a treatment plan was drawn up. A month later, Buratevich and Savely returned to Germany. There, after some time, the pains resumed, and Oksana again went to the German gastroenterologist. He said that it was all about psychosomatics. “The doctor referred us to the pain center. And we started going around in circles again. At the same time, the son’s condition only worsened. We were already known in all local clinics, but no one did anything, ”says Oksana.

This is not entirely true. One of the doctors wrote a complaint: allegedly the mother healed the child and provoked psychosomatic illnesses. Juvenile justice officers came to Oksana and took Savely away. Two weeks later, the court deprived her of parental rights for the period of examination of the child. The Germans decided to conduct an experiment by limiting the communication of the child with the mother. They are allowed to see each other once a week in the presence of guardianship employees and speak only in English or German. Buratevichi do not know German, Savely does not speak English, at least somehow the mother and son maintain a dialogue with the help of Google translator. The guy lives in a children’s boarding school, and Oksana collects money for a lawyer.

“Give to two dads”

Oksana is an active woman, she did not sit idly by. She began to unite with other similar Ukrainian women and look for options to return the children. Oksana claims that guardianship in Germany selects up to 10 thousand children a year. Now Ukrainian children have also got into this sad statistic. Among them are children from Kyiv, Zaporozhye, Dnipro, etc. “Their fate, according to the logic of the Germans, should be decided not by their own mothers, but by other people’s uncles. They are given to two dads, some middle-class people – to anyone, but not to their own families, ”the woman is indignant.

Fights with her for her child Elena Dashko from Severodonetsk. She arrived in Germany only in October last year, together with her 9-year-old daughter, settled in a refugee camp. The girl did not sleep well, was agitated, and her mother took her to a German psychologist. The child was left for a few days in the clinic to observe. This case did not suit the girl, she began to hysteria, scratch herself, etc. The case ended in court and Elena’s partial restriction of parental rights. She was not deprived of them, but was forbidden to decide where her child will be. That is, she cannot take her daughter from the clinic and turn to other specialists. “The clinic told me that I no longer have the right to visit my daughter, since she was appointed a guardian, and if I appear on the territory of the clinic, a criminal case will be opened against me, which was handed over to the relevant document,” says Elena.

She was also denied assistance when she applied to the Ukrainian consulate. Where is the daughter, she does not know how and with what drugs and for what she is being treated. For 3 months they were allowed to meet 4 times. “There are more than 100 cases in Germany alone when children were taken away from refugees. We are already uniting in communities, helping each other financially and legally. At the moment, I know of only one case when a child was returned to a family from Ukraine. We all want to go back, but we can’t do it while our children are here,” the women say.

I’m going to ask for help from Russia

Ukrainian journalist Jean Novoseltsev undertook to understand the history of all these women. The only thing he can do is to stream with them on the Internet. The Ukrainian media are in no hurry to get involved with this.

Novoseltsev says women from Portugal, Spain, Italy, France and Austria are applying. He had Ukrainian human rights activists on the air, who literally helped a Ukrainian woman with two children escape from an Italian monastery. Her children also wanted to be taken away. In Norway, 4 children were taken away from the family of a priest who came from Ukraine.

Remember the history of Ukrainian women Karina Voronova. She fled to Germany with her mother and children, but she ran into juveniles in another country. The eldest daughter of a woman with her grandmother went to competitions in Italy. There, the girl was assigned a temporary local guardian, because she was without parents. They did not listen to the grandmother, and when Karina flew in to save the child, they did not give her the girl. They demanded to prove in court that she was the legal mother!

There is a story of an Austrian human rights activist who brought several of these children, but not to Ukraine, but to Russia. The European media immediately screamed about the kidnapping, but the parents of the children are glad that they got away from juvenile justice. “But they did the right thing so that their children would not be dismantled for organs,” says Oksana Buratevych. – If our consulate does not respond, I will contact the consulate of Belarus and even Russia. I understand the war, but Russia is not all bad. I wrote letters to the President of Ukraine, tried to get through to Elena Zelenskaya… Our officials don’t care about our children, and I don’t care about the tanks they’re supposed to get there. They are now giving away our children for these planes and tanks.”