CCTV shows chilling moment Russian FSB agents and soldiers scour Ukrainian orphanage for children
Sky News has unearthed evidence Russia has been abducting Ukrainian orphans and children in care.
Allegations that the Russian military has been deporting children have been some of the most disturbing aspects of this nasty war.
Sky News investigated reports Russians took children from two orphanages in Kherson. Our investigation found evidence supporting the claims but also revealed extraordinary bravery among ordinary Ukrainians trying to thwart their efforts.
Ukrainian officials say the Russian military abducted 97 orphans when they withdrew from Kherson region.
The abduction of children is a grave violation of the rules of war.
Putin makes promise in ‘important speech’ – follow live war updates
Volodymyr Sahaidak is the director of an orphanage in the village of Stepanivka outside Kherson.
When Russian forces occupied the area he says he knew he had to take action to protect his children.
He had seen what Russians had done to orphans in the Donbas region since starting a civil war there in 2014.
“We saw Russian propagandists saying that they need to take the orphans to give them to military schools, indoctrinate them and let them fight for Russia,” he said.
“It was the scariest thing so we started hiding children because we understood they would take them.”
The chilling footage shows armed men walking through the orphanage
The 52 children at the orphanage were among the most vulnerable, orphans or in care, and it turns out Mr Sahaidak’s fears were well-founded.
Exclusive CCTV footage obtained by Sky News from the orphanage cameras captures the chilling moment Russians arrived to find the children.
The footage shows agents with Russia’s secret police, the FSB, leading soldiers with rifles through a building that should be a place of sanctuary.
Volodymyr Sahaidak said his orphanage started hiding children because he knew Russians would come to take them
“They confiscated all the children’s files,” Volodymyr told Sky News, “because they couldn’t figure out where the children were, so they took files, they took computers, they took away the CCTV system because they wanted to know where the children had gone.”
The children had gone because the community had heard the call from the orphanage to hide them. The entire village rallied together to protect the children, taking them in, three or four per family. They ran the risk of collaborators exposing them to the Russians and being arrested or shot.
The Russians never found the orphans but sent another fifteen children from elsewhere in Ukraine for the orphanage to look after. Sky News has seen videos showing orphanage staff taking them in and treating them as their own.
When Russian forces finally retreated from the region, they came and took all 15 children with them. There was nothing the orphanage could do.
Orphanage teacher Oxana described the day they were taken.
“They were put in these military vehicles and taken away, soldiers with machine guns, so of course the children were scared and didn’t know where they were being taken.”
The orphanage welcomed the children as their own
They weren’t the only ones, Sky News also investigated claims Russians took much younger children from another orphanage in central Kherson.
Natalya Kadyrova lives next to the orphanage. She also described the moment the Russian military came to abduct the children.
“When the children were being taken out, Russian armoured personnel vehicles were standing around the perimeter and soldiers so that no one would film.”
Read more:
Zelenskyy on his way to US to meet Biden
Eyewitness: Freedom comes at a price in Kherson
Click to subscribe to Ukraine War Diaries wherever you get your podcasts
The children were toddlers, ages three to five, and she says the moment still haunts her.
“Of course I’m worried about them, they are small children. They are just abandoned children. We do not know where they are, what happened to them or where they were taken.”
The Ukrainian prosecutors office says Russians took 48 orphans aged three to five from this orphanage. They say they have opened a criminal prosecution into the case and called in the Ukrainian secret service to investigate.
One of the orphanage’s children who was hidden from the Russians by Volodymr
The Ukrainian government says 13,000 children have been deported or abducted by Russia during the war.
Mr Sahaidak and his village saved 52 children from the clutches of the Russians, but not the other 15 orphans taken by them.
World
22 killed after suicide bomber opens fire at church in Syria – and then detonates explosive vest
At least 22 people have been killed after a suicide bomber opened fire at a church in Syria – and then detonated an explosive vest.
This is the first such incident since Bashar al Assad was toppled in December, and officials claim the attacker was a member of Islamic State.
It happened at a Greek Orthodox church in Damascus, with estimates suggesting that 350 worshippers were praying there at the time.
Pic: White Helmets via Reuters
Witnesses said the perpetrator had his face covered when he began shooting – and blew himself up as crowds attempted to remove him from the building.
A security source told Reuters that two men were involved in the attack, with a priest saying he saw a second gunman at the entrance.
Officials say 63 people were injured, and children were among the casualties.
Syria’s information minister, Hamza Mostafa, condemned the terrorist attack – writing on X: “This cowardly act goes against the civic values that bring us together.
“We will not back down from our commitment to equal citizenship… and we also affirm the state’s pledge to exert all its efforts to combat criminal organisations.”
Read more world news:
Live updates after US strikes Iran
Putin threatens nuclear strike on Ukraine
Pic: Reuters
Reports suggest that IS has attempted to attack several churches in Syria since Assad fell, but this is the first time they have succeeded.
Footage filmed by Syria’s civil defence, the White Helmets, showed scenes of destruction inside the church – including bloodied floors and shattered pews.
The Greek foreign ministry says it “unequivocally condemns the abhorrent terrorist suicide bombing”, and called on Syria “to guarantee the safety” of Christians with new measures.
Stunning images showing distant parts of the universe – including one of a region situated thousands of light years from Earth – have been captured by a powerful new telescope.
The camera at the Vera C Rubin Observatory in Chile is expected to reveal new details from space on an unprecedented scale as it makes further observations during the next decade.
Scientists expect it to chart thousands of asteroids not previously identified – and believe it will discover within months whether there is a ninth planet in our solar system.
The new images show the light from millions of stars and galaxies in observations which took the world’s largest and most powerful camera only 10 hours to complete.
One image shows a mosaic of the Trifid and Lagoon nebulae, a star-forming region which is 9,000 light years from Earth.
A single light year is the distance light travels in 12 months. In space, it “zips through at 186,000 miles per second and 5.88 trillion miles per year”, says NASA.
Galaxies pictured in the Virgo Cluster. Pic: NSF-DOE Vera C Rubin Observatory
Another image shows thousands of galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, in what scientists said offers just a “peek at the cosmos”.
The observatory is jointly funded by the National Science Foundation, an independent agency of the US government.
The first images offer a small taste of what might come. Pic: NSF-DOE Vera C Rubin Observatory
The foundation’s chief of staff Brian Stone told CNN the observatory “will capture more information about our universe than all optical telescopes throughout history combined”.
Rubin has been built on a mountain in the Andes, a region in central Chile which is also home to other observatories due to its dry air and dark skies.
The telescope’s work will “capture the cosmos in exquisite detail” as it repeatedly scans the sky for 10 years to “create an ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition time-lapse record of our universe”.
Read more from Sky News:
Why Israel is believed to have nuclear weapons programme
Every baby in the UK to receive DNA testing
Scientists in the UK will be working in partnership with the teams at Rubin to help process the detailed information and images captured by the telescope.
The National Science Foundation is expected to release more images and video from Rubin’s initial work later on Monday.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike