During the visit, the Ukrainian delegation spoke at meetings of the largest parliamentary groups of the European Parliament: The ECR Group, EPP Group, Greens/EFA Group, and Renew Europe Group. In addition, there were official meetings with the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, and the Chairman of the European People’s Party, Manfred Weber, as well as separate informal meetings with the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs Hadja Lahbib, and the Renew Europe Group MEP, Hilde Vautmans.

Besides, Ukrainians attended the European Parliament’s plenary session on 13 March as guests of honour. During this, Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib said that Putin’s actions “remind us of the darkest days of the last century”, referring to the Stalinist-era deportations.

During the meetings, 17-year-old Valeriya Halych shared her story of living under occupation, then in Belgorod, and her multiple attempts to return to Ukraine to her mother.

“I share my experiences not for the world to know my story, but for the world to understand: there are thousands of stories like mine. Thousands of children are waiting to come home. And the fact that I was able to endure and survive gives me the strength to be the voice of these children. I want leaders of different countries to hear me and help Ukraine bring its children home”

— emphasised Valeriya.

The visit was organised jointly by the International Centre for Ukrainian Victory, the Center for Civil Liberties, the Anti-Corruption Action Centre, the Ukrainian Child Rights Network and the Voices of Children Foundation, with the support of the U4U parliamentary group.

“Children are being held in Russia, Belarus and the temporarily occupied territories. There, they are subjected to restrictions and abuse: they are forced to sing the Russian anthem, write letters to Russian soldiers and participate in numerous ‘military-patriotic’ activities. The main goal of these actions is to raise Ukrainian children as Russians,”

— said Andriy Chernousov, Head of the Legal Department of the Charity Foundation “Voices of Children”, during the visit.

According to the expert, deported Ukrainian children are forced to join paramilitary youth organisations such as Yunarmiya, Bolshaya Peremena, Liga Pervykh and others. These organisations are designed to change the identity of Ukrainian children, to exalt the “power of the Russians”.

It should be noted that at present, Ukraine has been able to identify 19,546 Ukrainian children, of whom only slightly more than 400 have been successfully returned home.

Most of the deported Ukrainian children are orphans or children deprived of parental care, some of whom lost their parents during the large-scale invasion and come from orphanages. At the same time, according to various estimates, more than 210,000 children, both accompanied and unaccompanied by adults, could have been displaced by Russia during the war, although this figure and the whereabouts of the children cannot be verified.