SAVE THE ORPHANS
100,000 forgotten victims of Putin’s invasion
CRAMMED into a dingy basement as missiles shriek overhead, Ukraine’s orphanage children are the forgotten victims of Putin’s war.
The youngsters huddle in their pyjamas and nightclothes in the cellar of a nursery during an air raid on the capital, Kyiv.
The vulnerable kids, many of whom have disabilities, live in one of Ukraine’s 700 state-run orphanages because their parents were unable to care for them.
Now, they have been abandoned again as the 60,000 staff flee to save their own families.
It is thought more than 100,000 children are living in the orphanages, which have only a few days’ supply of food, water and medicine left.
The British charity Hope and Homes for Children has managed to lead at least 100 youngsters to safety. It rescued 50 kids under the age of 14 from Dnipro in eastern Ukraine. Daria, 40, who works for the charity in Dnipro, said: “When the rockets started falling, it was a massive shock.
“We started to very quickly instruct the children how we should conduct ourselves during an air raid.
“On the third night, we heard bombs in nearby districts. I would walk into the dorm and say, ‘Children, explosions’, and they would quickly and orderly go to the basement.
“We also told them, ‘You are eating now so make sure you finish every morsel because we don’t know when the next delivery of food will come’.
“One of the girls, seven-year-old Julia came up to me and said, ‘I’m scared. I’m worried that my mother will get drunk, fall asleep on the street and the explosions will kill her’.”
Another 50 children from Vorzel, near the capital were bussed away by the charity when their orphanage was hit by an illegal Russian cluster bomb. Mercifully, there were no casualties.
The charity’s Ukrainian director Halyna [we are withholding her last name for fear of Russian reprisals] has managed to relocate more children from an orphanage in Kyiv.
But she said: “I’m worried the few who can be got out are not being monitored. They’re disappearing. Some are even taken overseas.”
Missing
Hope and Homes boss Mark Waddington, 53, is directing operations from the Ukraine-moldova border. He told the Sunday People: “There’s no central tracking system to know which children are where. They are going missing.”
Tragically, that puts the youngsters at risk of beatings, rape, torture and being trafficked. Mr Waddington added: “The mothers with children coming over the border have the means to go elsewhere in Europe. My big worry is the second wave, including unaccompanied children, will have far fewer resources. Some will be destitute.”
That is why the Sunday People has teamed up with the charity to launch an appeal to save these children.
For the last 25 years, Hope and Homes has devoted itself to finding loving homes for orphanage kids.
But now it is providing emergency aid – such as food, water, clothes and medicine – to Ukraine.
The charity’s patrons include Bond girl Olga Kurylenko and former chief of defence, Richard Dannatt.
Olga, 42, who was born and raised in Ukraine, said: “I struggle to comprehend the suffering of millions of families – including my own – caught up in this war.
“So imagine the suffering of children who are totally alone.”
And Lord Dannatt, 71, who has been associated with the charity for 30 years, said: “I’ve seen refugee children separated from family and thrown into dangerous orphanages in foreign lands.
“We cannot allow history to repeat itself in Ukraine.”