Russian resources are again trying to manipulate the topic of the evacuation of children by Ukrainian military personnel and volunteers from active combat zones in the Donbas. Thus, propagandists are distributing an interview in which a local resident allegedly recalls a family of three children whose mother died, and claims that they were forcibly evacuated and then “given to organs or pedophiles”.

However, this is a fake, journalists from the StopFake project write. Such interviews are not supported by any evidence, but only by the words of people who call themselves residents of front-line settlements. Moreover, one can find news materials about this family on the Internet. After looking at them, one can find out that in fact the volunteers took these children to their relatives.

In March 2023, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved a resolution on the forced evacuation of children from such zones. “This is not about taking children away from their parents. This is not about the use of physical coercion. The legal peculiarity of the forced evacuation of children is that at least one of the parents does not have the right to refuse evacuation and must accompany the child during the evacuation”, Iryna Vereshchuk, Minister for Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories, commented on the decision.

However, even with the advent of a mechanism for evacuating children from dangerous areas, police and volunteers still have to spend a long time persuading families to agree to leave. Some remain, and no one takes these children out by force.

Russia is conducting a separate disinformation campaign targeting Ukrainians living in front-line cities and villages. Its goal is to disrupt the evacuation, sow distrust in the Ukrainian authorities and incline towards collaboration. Previously, we have already analyzed a similar Russian fake that in Ukraine children are allegedly sold for organs or into sexual slavery.