Who fled Ukraine with orphans? In the wake of the scandal that the ombudsman started

Human Rights Commissioner Dmitry Lubinets accused the capital's officials, and now says that his words were twisted

At the beginning of July, Human Rights Commissioner Dmitry Lubinets made an unexpected “exposure.” The Ombudsman issued a message under the loud heading “They got rid of mobilization,” which he distributed on his pages on social networks.

Lubinets created intrigue from the very beginning, announcing a story about “how orphans and children deprived of parental care became a cover for close relatives of Kyiv officials to illegally travel abroad and avoid mobilization.” And then he told a real detective story.

The officials of the Kyiv City State Administration mentioned in this disclosure quickly found a number of inconsistencies in the official’s note, denied all the facts that were stated in it, and now demand an official refutation from the Ombudsman. If they don’t wait, they are going to go to court.

However, the development of this story largely went unnoticed by the media, which a month ago massively disseminated its beginning - news with accusations against Lubinets.

Ombudsman's version

The story that the ombudsman told in his note concerns the very beginning of a full-scale invasion. All events took place in March 2022, when the empty Kyiv was in semi-lockdown, under threat of capture by Russian occupiers.

The monitoring, which was carried out by employees of the Ombudsman's Office, discovered that at that time the heads of the capital's Service for Children and Family Affairs in Kyiv and the head of the Center for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation of Children No. 1 in Kyiv then sent the evacuated children to Kyiv. Kyiv was then sent to evacuate children abroad; we are talking about orphans and children deprived of parental care, who were sent to a youth camp in the German town of Wuppertal. Among the accompanying persons, according to the Ombudsman, there were also four other people, close relatives of capital officials, the grounds for whose departure require additional study.

Lubinets drew attention to the fact that the accompanying persons were not related to the relevant field, and only the day before the departure they became employees of specialized institutions, and some were not employed at all. Moreover, all the men quit their jobs after going abroad and never returned to Ukraine.

The Ombudsman's team also complained that they tried to enter the camp in Germany, but were not allowed in. The reason is that there were no escorts from Ukraine on its territory, and the children were exclusively under the care of the German side. However, representatives of the Ombudsman somehow managed to find out that there were “not enough” children in the camp: if, according to the director of the Center, 68 children were evacuated to Germany from the very beginning, then for some reason only 55 arrived at the camp.

The Ombudsman came to the conclusion that the Ukrainian side simply forgot about its charges.

Lubinets generalized that cases of the use of such schemes are not isolated and threatened to check documents related to foreign business trips even more carefully in the future. And he promised to involve the Office of the Prosecutor General, the National Police, the Ministry of Social Policy, the National Social Service and the Kyiv City State Administration in the investigation of the stated facts.

Version of capital officials

Such loud accusations were immediately responded to by those in whose direction they actually flew. The Kyiv Service for Children and Family Affairs refuted the interpretation of the use of children to avoid mobilization, which was adopted by Lubinets. The head of the Service, Valery Tantsyura, noted from the podium of the Kyiv City Council that his son Artem actually crossed the border as a person accompanying the children to Wuppertal on an evacuation train. But there are nuances: firstly, my son was 18 years old at that time, and he was not subject to mobilization then or now. And, secondly, the guy who caused such a scandal is now in Ukraine.

Tansyura noted that in the chaos at the very beginning of the invasion, less than 20 full-time workers were found who could accompany the children abroad. In addition, the group included very difficult teenagers from 15 to 17 years old, with whom only women found it difficult to cope. Therefore, Artem came in handy, who, moreover, had previous experience working with children as a counselor and served as a translator in the group, because he was the only one who knew German. For two years Artem remained in Germany and worked with the children he helped evacuate. At the same time, the guy entered a German college and is studying to major in teaching. Now he continues his studies and volunteers in Ukraine at a center for children.

But there is one more detail that puts the ombudsman with his accusations in an awkward position: the eldest son of the Tantsyura official defends Ukraine on the front line. The father was forced to make this information public after the scandal.

Regarding the fate of the workers who left with their children, Tantsyura explained that almost all of them returned to Ukraine, and some of those who did not return resigned from their positions. Since there are only 30 children left in Wuppertal, small groups have been formed and are supported by the local government. Ukrainian workers have become unnecessary, but they must now independently decide how to stay in Germany further.

Another relative of the Kyiv official who took part in the evacuation was the daughter-in-law of the director of the center for socio-psychological rehabilitation of children No. 1 in Kyiv, Viktor Dreval. She is not a full-time employee of the center, but it is also difficult to suspect a woman of evading mobilization in 2022 for obvious reasons.

Already in the fall of 2022, Dreval’s son left for Germany to work as a teacher. However, he has been disabled since 2019 and crossed the border not as an accompanying child, but as a person with a disability who is also not subject to mobilization.

The Service for Children and Family Affairs in Kyiv also denies Lubinets’ “arithmetic” regarding missing children.

“None of the children got lost,” says the acting director. Deputy Head of the Service Tatyana Badilevich, “For each child there is a history, correspondence, there are all the necessary documents, personal files have been created.”

The institution explains: 68 children were actually evacuated to Germany, but immediately before crossing the border, one girl was handed over to her mother, who provided supporting documents and expressed a desire to independently handle the evacuation. Further confusion in the numbers occurred due to the fact that children were evacuated from two different capital centers: 55 from the Center for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation of Children No. 1 and another 12 from the Obolonsky District Center in Kyiv. If you add them up, everything fits together.

“Wrong accents”

Ombudsman Lubinets, who was caught by journalists of the municipal TV channel “Kyiv”, rather vaguely explains the obvious mistakes in his exposure of “deviation”. “The problem, in my opinion, is primarily in the activities of state executive bodies,” Lubinets unexpectedly turned this scandalous story around.

The ombudsman explained the harsh and peremptory tone of his sensational investigation by the lack of a quick reaction from Klitschko’s subordinates, to whom the appeal was sent.

“This is probably the first time there has been such a public position,” Lubinets justifies himself. “When I don’t get a reaction, then I decide to go public, because, unfortunately, now the mass media are the most effective mechanism for influencing the position of state bodies of local self-government.” . But in this particular situation, perhaps, the emphasis was not placed quite correctly, somewhere someone picked it up in the wrong way.”

However, officials of the capital’s administration decided that it would be difficult to somehow misplace the emphasis in the material with an unambiguous title - “They got us out of mobilization.” Children and Family Services on behalf of v.i.o. Deputy Chairman Tatyana Badilevich sent Lubinets a demand to refute false information as damaging to the business reputation of the Service and Center No. 1.

The former representative of the Ombudsman for Children’s Rights, Gender Equality and Anti-Discrimination Aksana Filipishina, an interview with whom you will read on “Glavkom” in the near future, believes that Lubinets in this situation clearly went beyond the scope of his mandate.

“If the ombudsman has any suspicions that someone is using some kind of scheme and is a violator, he should report this to law enforcement agencies, and not make it the main news in the context of the evacuation of Ukrainian children and respect for their rights, yes also disclose people’s personal data,” notes Filipishina.

Now the Ombudsman's Office prefers not to touch this topic anymore. Obviously, they are still thinking about how to get out of the ambiguous story that they themselves have brewed.

Lubinets himself “gives back,” but slowly. After the uproar, he tried to reduce the tension: he complained that his words had been twisted, explained everything by poor communication, and even began praising the head of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko.

“We looked into it in detail, and I understand that, apparently, the emphasis was placed incorrectly. Local governments did what state governments should have done. The head of the city of Kyiv himself took part in this, and it was clear how he understands this, and I am grateful to him,” admitted Lubinets, but still has not apologized and has not deleted his resonant post.