Officials of Kyiv based social services had allegedly used their male relatives to accompany orphaned children abroad so that they would avoid mobilization, according to a report by Ukrainian Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets in a Telegram post.
“They were ‘got off’ from mobilization. How orphans and children deprived of parental care have become a cover for close relatives of Kyiv officials to illegally travel abroad and avoid mobilization,” Lubinets wrote, describing this case.
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According to him, the employees of his office during monitoring visits to Germany established that officials from the Service for Children and Family Affairs of Kyiv (Service) and the Center for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation of Children No. 1 of Kyiv (Center) sent their close relatives to accompany the orphans abroad.
In March 2022, when active hostilities approached Kyiv, 68 pupils of the Center, accompanied by 20 people, were evacuated to a former youth camp near the city of Wuppertal in Germany. These pupils are orphans, children deprived of parental care, and children facing difficult life circumstances.
This year, Lubinets’ representatives paid monitoring visits to institutions abroad where Ukrainian children are staying. However, they were not allowed to enter the camp in the city of Wuppertal, explaining this by the fact that there were no escorts from Ukraine on the territory, and the children were exclusively under the care of the German state.
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“According to the information of the German escorts, there were 55 children from the beginning of the evacuation, but according to the order of the director of the Center, 68 were evacuated to Germany. The question is, where are the [other] 13 children?” the ombudsman asked.
He stated that the monitoring group was not provided with the relevant information so was never able to verify the data.
Given the situation, the employees of the Ombudsman’s Office made unscheduled visits to the Service and the Center to examine the relevant evacuation documents and to talk with the management.
“What we found out was shocking: the management does not have information about the situation in the institution!” Lubinets said.
He added that the Service and the Center do not have copies of documents or any records about the conditions of the children's stay under the care of Germany.
As Lubinets’ Office discovered, among the accompanying persons during the evacuation in official orders were people who had no experience in the field of child care, and some only became employees of the institution the day before the evacuation and some were never employed at all.
“The most interesting thing is that among these people there is a close relative of the head of the Service and a close relative of the head of the Center,” the ombudsman said.
In addition, there are also four more persons among the accompanying persons, the reasons for whose departure require additional study.
Each of the accompanying men resigned from their positions once they left the country, and none of them currently work for these bodies, Lubinets pointed out. At most, they did not return to Ukraine.
“Only in 2024, did our Office find out that the pupils of the Center for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation of Children No. 1 of Kyiv were left without a Ukrainian escort. Access to these children must now be requested from the German authorities, which have acted following their law,” the report read.
Lubinets added that he had already sent relevant letters to the Prosecutor General's Office, the National Police, the Ministry of Social Policy, and the Kyiv City State Administration, revealing the discovered violations.
“After such an incident, we will more carefully check documents related to foreign business trips... After all, it seems that such cases are not unique!” he reported.
In a comment to the Suspilne media outlet, the head of Kyiv’s children and family service, Valery Tansyura, said that only 20 men accompanied a group of orphans abroad. One of them returned to Ukraine, and the rest remained in Germany, including his son.
“It was necessary to resolve the issue of escorts. Most of the employees refused to go because they had their own families. I actually forced my son, an 18-year-old student, to leave with an escort,” Tansyura said.
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