In besieged Bakhmut. Le Figaro: Saving children is a risky task

In almost completely besieged Bakhmut, which is no longer habitable, police receive numerous calls from residents of the city who had previously refused to leave and are now begging the authorities to save them.

Among those calling for help are those with children who should have been entrusted to the Ukrainian authorities for evacuation, but it is too late, and more than 16,<> minors have been transferred to Russian territory since the start of the war.

This is the conclusion of a report by the French newspaper "Le Figaro", in which Margot Ben, its special envoy to Kostyantinevka, Ukraine, tells the stories of evacuation missions for some children in Bakhtmot carried out by the "White Angels" squad of the Ukrainian police, despite shelling and obstruction of evacuations by some parents.

The reporter begins with the story of 8-year-old Bohdan who was playing alone at the neighbor's house, where he was left behind by his parents, who went on a funeral visit, before falling in a bombing on one of the city's bridges after which they will never return.

The news flew quickly to reach the little one who slipped - in the ignorance of the neighbor - on a bicycle he found in the yard of the house, so he reached the bridge and stood in front of the bodies of his parents, before he was joined by the neighbor, who tried for several hours to return him while refusing until dark.

Bohdan stayed with his neighbor for three days, during which municipal officials recovered the bodies and buried them. "The task entrusted to me by the authorities was to retrieve the bodies of an adult couple, but the bridge that was supposed to lead us to their area inside Pakhmut had just been destroyed, so we turned back before we learned hours later that the deceased couple had a child who had not died with them," said one of the police officers assigned to retrieve the victims, Pavlo Dyachenko, 3.

Without hesitation, the reporter says, the "White Angels" team, a name given by locals to the Donbass police unit that evacuates civilians in the midst of fighting and sometimes their bodies, returned to Bakhomot to cross the waterway on foot, take the shocked, silent Bohdan and pull him out of Pakhmot on foot under the bombardment.

War Orphans Program

The squad transported Bohdan, who began to domesticate the dog accompanying the police, to the unreached town of Kostyantinivka, to take a break before traveling to Kiev, and then to Spain for treatment for 3 weeks with other Ukrainian children.

A Ukrainian NGO is treating Bohdan and other children who are war orphans, and its founder Oksana Lebedeva says that "Bohdan is a young child with psychological trauma, but he is sensitive and wonderful," and adds, "Initially, the program was open to all children psychologically affected by the war, but in the face of the magnitude of the problem, we reserve the program for children who have lost one or both parents to the war."

The correspondent pointed out that 12 of the 50 children participating in the program, came from the Donetsk region, including Bohdan and 3 young girls whose father was killed at the door of his house, so they dragged the body into the house with their mother, to live with her for 8 days because the situation was very dangerous and it was impossible for rescuers to reach them, according to one of the organization's officials.

Forced eviction

At the beginning of March, evacuation teams, including White Angels, were instructed to evacuate children from the towns most affected by the fighting at all costs, regardless of what their parents say.

This has led to some problems, says Pavlo Dyachenko, with some people rejecting the decision and hiding their children, either because they have nowhere to go, or because they see danger as not imminent and that they are safe in their basements.

However, "reluctant parents should take into account Article 166 of the Criminal Code according to which parents can be held criminally responsible if they deliberately expose their children to physical danger," said Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Irina Vereshuk.

The last evacuation from Pakhmut was carried out by Pavlo Dyachenko's band of "White Angels" on March 3, after which Pavlo Dyachenko says that "the situation has become very dangerous, we tried to carry out more evacuations, and we asked people to come and meet us on the outskirts of the city, but the shelling was so heavy that we all thought we were going to die, and the residents who tried to come to us fled."