KYIV
\nUkraine launched a mobile application on Thursday to help find children who have disappeared during more than 13 months of Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion, the National Police said.
\nKyiv estimates 19,544 children have been deported to Russia during the invasion, with only 328 of them returned. Moscow, which controls chunks of Ukraine\u2019s east and south, denies abducting children and says they were taken for their safety.
\nUkraine has joined forces with US tech company Find My Parent to develop the app \u201cReunite Ukraine\u201d that would help reconnect families separated during the conflict, said Oleksander Fatsevych, deputy head of the National Police.
\n\u201cIt is one of the instruments to find children and reunite them with the families,\u201d he told an online briefing.
\n\u201cIf we find even one child in such a way or reunite one family, it will be already a victory, a small one, but with every step we will be able to return children home.\u201d
\nThe International Criminal Court last month issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia\u2019s children\u2019s rights commissioner, accusing them of abducting children from Ukraine.
\nMoscow has not concealed a program under which it has brought thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia from occupied areas, but presents it as a humanitarian campaign to protect orphans and children abandoned in the conflict zone.
\nThe children\u2019s commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, said this week that Russia had accepted more than 5 million refugees from Ukraine\u2019s Donbas region, including 730,000 children with parents or legal guardians, since February 2022.
\nRussia does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC and has called the warrant null and void.
\nThe app was free to download and easy to operate, Fatsevych said. It had multi-level identity security checks. Police would check and confirm personal profiles and act as an intermediary to enable communication via the app.
\nFatsevych said the app would enable police to gather more data in a safe and secure way, including from people in Russia, Belarus or in occupied territories who wanted to help the Ukrainian children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KYIV Ukraine launched a mobile application on Thursday to help find children who have disappeared during more than 13 months of Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion, the National Police said. Kyiv estimates 19,544 children have been deported to Russia during the invasion, with only 328 of them returned. Moscow, which controls chunks of Ukraine\u2019s east and south, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324363,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-324338","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n