5 Russian children evacuated from Iraq arrive in Moscow

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Five Russian children who were evacuated from the combat zone in Iraq have arrived in Moscow, a Sputnik correspondent reported Wednesday.

Children from the republics of Chechnya and Dagestan arrived at the Vnukovo airport after midday. They were welcomed by Russia’s Commissioner for Human Rights Tatyana Moskalkova and Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Anna Kuznetsova.

In August, the RT broadcaster filmed a Baghdad orphanage where Russian children were living. They were smuggled to Iraq by parents who came there to join the Islamic State terrorist group (IS, banned in Russia), including in the northern city of Mosul. The kids were abandoned after the government’s offensive to retake the city ended.

On September 2, Moskalkova told Sputnik that she was preparing to lodge a request to the United Nations, asking the organization to provide assistance in creating humanitarian corridors for Russian women and children willing to leave conflict-torn Mosul.

In September, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov posted a video showing Ziyad Sabsabi, his special representative in the Middle East and North Africa, transporting two children from an Iraqi orphanage to the airport to fly them back to Chechnya’s regional capital of Grozny. He said efforts continued to return Russian children whose families abandoned them in Syria and Iraq.