Lyudmila is the 71st child among other children who reunited with their families in Ukraine or other countries with the direct involvement of Maria Lvova-Belova and officials from the Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights Office. This does not include children whose parents from the Kherson, Zaporozhye, and Kharkov regions and other territories sent them for vacations to resorts in southern Russia in the autumn of 2022 and were unable to take them back in time. Another nine children have reunited with five families in Russia.
The girl lived with her father and grandmother in a Russian region, to which they moved after the special military operation had begun. Later, because of the difficulties the family faced, she ended up in a social rehabilitation centre. Her mother with three other children lived in Poland. She could not come to pick up her daughter in person because of problems at the border.
The Commissioner’s Office learnt about this family from volunteers. Through the mediation of representatives of the State of Qatar and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), transport logistics were worked through and assistance was provided in obtaining the necessary documents. The girl’s father gave his consent for the child to go to her mother. A close friend of the mother who lives in Russia acted as trusted person and took the girl from the rehabilitation centre.
Accompanied by an employee from the Commissioner’s Office, Lyudmila went to Belarus, where she reunited with her mother. The meeting was held at the Embassy of Qatar in Minsk and attended by Charge d’Affaires of the State of Qatar in Belarus Abdulaziz Al-Kuwari. He expressed gratitude to everyone involved in the reunification of the families that had been separated by the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.