Russian missile attack on outpatient clinic kills two

A Russian missile strike on an outpatient clinic in the city of Dnipro killed two people and injured 30, in what President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described as a crime against humanity.

In the latest wave of aerial attacks on Ukraine, a salvo of missiles aimed at Kyiv were launched by Russian aircraft over the Caspian Sea last Friday but they were all intercepted, according to the capital’s military administration. It said this was the 13th attack on the city this month.

Ukrainian air defence also claimed to have shot down 25 out of 31 Iranian-designed Shahed drones aimed at Kyiv.

The stories told to Svitlana Popova’s 15-year-old daughter, Alina, while she lived under Russian occupation in Ukraine’s southern Kherson province, were designed to terrify her. Yvgenia, the pro-Russian mother of Alina’s best friend, spun her a web of lies. Alina and her family, the woman insisted, had taken food aid from the Russianimposed administration. When the Ukrainian forces came into Kherson, she said, they would hurt anyone who had been in contact with the Russians.

Alina thought Yvgenia was her friend. When the woman suggested fleeing to Russia for “safety”, the girl agreed. The reality was darker. Yvgenia saw caring for Alina as a way to get money and a better apartment. Once across the border, she became abusive.

Thousands of children have been kidnapped and taken to Russia since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February last year. Alina is one of the lucky few hundred who have been returned after her mother, helped by volunteers, made the frightening journey to Russia to plead her case before the country’s social services.

According to the Ukrainian government, 16,226 children have been deported to Russia, of whom 10,513 have been located and more than 300 have returned. Some fear the number of missing could be an underestimate. Unaccompanied children, some whose parents were killed during the siege of Mariupol, have disappeared into a Kremlin-sanctioned system now under investigation by the international criminal court.

The Popova family’s experience, and that of others who spoke to the Guardian, sheds light on another aspect of the removal of Ukrainian children to Russia: how friends and relatives took children, sometimes for mercenary reasons. Tracking her daughter down via social media, Svitlana found Alina had been taken to a village 1,500km inside Russia.

“I was so scared,” said Alina. “Yvgenia was so friendly when I was in Ukraine but she tricked me. When she knew I was talking to my mother, she became angry and hit me. She was obsessed with money and what she could get from the authorities for looking after me.”

To get her daughter back, there was only one option for Svitlana: to travel to Russia via a “terrifying” route through Poland and Belarus.

“It’s not only unaccompanied children who have been sent to camps in Russia, and kids kidnapped from boarding schools and orphanages,” said the former children’s ombudsman Mykola Kuleba, who runs the Save Ukraine rescue network that helps parents like Svitlana.

“We’re not sure how many we are talking about,” he said. “In some cases, we are talking about children who were in occupied areas while the rest of their family stayed in Ukrainian-controlled areas. We are most concerned for those children who have been missing for six months and more where Russian authorities have prepared birth certificates and passports and sent them to foster families.”

Kuleba said he had heard of children being taken for financial benefit. Despite the successes of his group in repatriating Ukrainian children, Kuleba had detected “a change for the worse” in the attitude of the Russian authorities. “They understand each of these cases is a war crime and they are increasingly trying to block returns.”