Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Evacuation of Children to Crimea: SBU Announced New Suspicion Against Gauleiter Saldo and His Accomplices
The Security Service documented new crimes by traitor Volodymyr Saldo – head of the Russian occupation administration on the left bank of Kherson region. He and two of his accomplices are involved in the illegal relocation of Ukrainian children after the capture of the regional center.
According to the SBU, the investigation found that on 7 October 2022 the defendants organized the illegal removal of students from the Kherson Vocational Shipbuilding Lyceum to so-called “sanatoriums” in temporarily occupied Crimea.
It was established that the institution’s wards were first transported by buses to the river port, and from there by motorboats to the left bank, where additional transport awaited them on a route to the peninsula.
To organize the illegal evacuation, Saldo recruited Viktor Lohninov – a former serviceman of the Russian army, who at the time of the crime held the “position of deputy director of the lyceum.”
According to investigators, to conceal the illegal transfer of children he personally entered fictitious data into the lyceum’s record documentation.
The second accomplice, Mykola Dolzhenko, a teacher at the lyceum that had been seized at the time, accompanied the students throughout the entire route to Crimea.
By these actions the defendants violated Article 49 of Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, which prohibits the forcible transfer of protected persons from occupied territory.
On the basis of the collected evidence, SBU investigators notified Saldo and his two accomplices in absentia of suspicion under part 2 of Article 28, part 1 of Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (war crimes committed by a group by prior conspiracy).
Since the perpetrators are hiding in a temporarily occupied part of Ukraine, comprehensive measures are ongoing to hold them accountable.
In another criminal proceeding based on SBU materials, the gauleiter of Kherson region, Saldo, was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison.
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