Qatar announces agreement between Ukraine and Russia on child exchange

Qatar has announced an agreement between Ukraine and Russia on the exchange of 13 children.

Source: French newspaper Le Monde

Details: "Nine minors and one adult will be reunited with their families in Ukraine," a Qatari official told AFP, specifying that "four minors" will be reunited with their families in Russia.

The nine children coming back to Ukraine are aged between 12 and 17. The children going to Russia are between 2 and 7 years old.

All of them will be received at the Qatari Embassy in Moscow before being reunited with their families.

Qatar has been mediating this issue since July 2023, helping repatriate Ukrainian children taken to Russia and Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022.

Background: 

• In the spring of 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russian Commissioner for Children's Rights, for their direct involvement in the "deportation" of Ukrainian children to Russia since February 2022.
• Ukraine estimates that 20,000 Ukrainian minors have been deported or forcibly transferred to Russia, though the actual number may be much higher, as this figure only accounts for officially identified children. So far, around 400 of them have been repatriated.

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