Latest / Voices for Voices® / Episode 74: Unseen Heroes of Ukraine: Rescuing Kidnapped Children
Transcript
- 0:02Justin Alan Hayes: Welcome to Kyiv, Ukraine with the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast here with the Saving Ukraine, Mykola Kuleba.
- 0:12Justin Alan Hayes: Thank you for joining us.
- 0:13Justin Alan Hayes: Thank you so much.
- 0:14Justin Alan Hayes: Just got goosebumps from what we just saw Reunification with a child with his mom.
- 0:23Justin Alan Hayes: What keeps you doing what you're doing?
- 0:26Justin Alan Hayes: What guy?
- 0:27Justin Alan Hayes: You started in 2014?
- 0:30Mykola Kuleba: Yeah, we started our evacuation mission.
- 0:32Mykola Kuleba: We have the biggest rescue network in Ukraine and our main goal to rescue families with children from combat zones.
- 0:40Mykola Kuleba: And after last year, after the occupation of territories in the Haruky region, our rescue teams recognized because they were first who came there in these occupied territories and they were reporting me that, Nikolai, we found the families where children were kidnapped, we deported to Russia.
- 1:01Mykola Kuleba: I don't know how it happened.
- 1:02Mykola Kuleba: They told oh, children were sent by Russians to the educational camps or summer camps.
- 1:09Mykola Kuleba: They kidnapped just military schemes and two kids and we started our rescue missions for children who've been abducted by Russians.
- 1:20Mykola Kuleba: And now, just, we finished our seventh rescue mission and we returned 22 kids during this rescue mission.
- 1:29Mykola Kuleba: But altogether 120 kids have been returned and we had one family here with a brave blood.
- 1:42Mykola Kuleba: It's a child who's been abducted and now we return him from the military academy, Russian military academy.
- 1:49Mykola Kuleba: He's been there.
- 1:50Mykola Kuleba: He's very pro-Ukrainian boy.
- 1:53Mykola Kuleba: He's Ukrainian boy but he expressed his Ukrainian position there and he was blamed, he was pressed, he was tortured.
- 2:02Mykola Kuleba: It was a psychological torturing of him.
- 2:07Mykola Kuleba: He was in the.
- 2:09Mykola Kuleba: He was prisoned for five days and it is very.
- 2:14Mykola Kuleba: It's a horrible story what happened, but it's a successful story because we returned him to Ukraine and in this family, eight children and youngers it's 11, 11 months child and mother so brave to go there to take him from from occupied territories, from this academy, and Russians prisoned her and four days she went through interrogation of FSB and she was prisoned and she she was sitting in the jail and waiting and she's she's brave, she's a real hero and this boy, they're heroes for us.
- 2:58Justin Alan Hayes: They are Haven't ever had sirens all hours of the day.
- 3:02Justin Alan Hayes: What I've been struck with my time here in Kiev is the resilience of the people continuing life as normal.
- 3:09Justin Alan Hayes: But where's that resilience come from?
- 3:13Mykola Kuleba: It's from our DNA, yeah, and it's really nobody believed that we will stand when, when this full scale aggression happened.
- 3:23Mykola Kuleba: We many people believe that Awu is three days, how, how Putin promised everybody we will, we will grab whole Ukraine in three days.
- 3:33Mykola Kuleba: But I analyze this.
- 3:36Mykola Kuleba: Why it happened?
- 3:37Mykola Kuleba: Because we were under the Russians for a long time.
- 3:40Mykola Kuleba: It's it's in Russia employer and they prison and kill and deported millions of Ukrainian Holocaust and Gulag and many, many families and children were deported.
- 3:54Mykola Kuleba: And I've been in Soviet school in Ukraine and Kiev and I never expressed myself as a Ukrainian guy.
- 4:02Mykola Kuleba: Yeah, but what happened now?
- 4:04Mykola Kuleba: Why we stand?
- 4:05Mykola Kuleba: Why we?
- 4:06Mykola Kuleba: Why we have this battle and we, we deliberate, we, we liberate our territories?
- 4:15Mykola Kuleba: It's only one answer this DNA is now a blood.
- 4:18Mykola Kuleba: We're standing because we are Ukrainians, like this boy who being captured, who being in in Russian military academy because he been placed there, he every day express his Ukrainian identity.
- 4:33Mykola Kuleba: He was banished for this.
- 4:35Mykola Kuleba: But because this DNA, ukrainian DNA, we're so proud to be in Ukrainians today and we need your support.
- 4:45Mykola Kuleba: We need support of all countries, civilized world, yeah, yeah, to protect our children, protect our families, to return more kids, to recover them and to integrate them in new areas, because millions of Ukrainian families lost their homes and we continue standing in this battle and we will win, I believe.
- 5:13Justin Alan Hayes: Yeah, so how can people get in touch with Save Ukraine to help out the mission if they're in the states or really anywhere in the world?
- 5:20Justin Alan Hayes: You?
- 5:21Mykola Kuleba: can easily go to our website, saveukrainuaorg or saveukrainusorg, and please help us.
- 5:32Mykola Kuleba: You can donate, help us return more children.
- 5:35Mykola Kuleba: You can help us find more kids who are in Russia now and they have no idea where their relatives are, and we can help them to be returned and we can help them to be recovered and to be integrated, like this family with 14 people, because this mother and father and eight kids and the aunt with three kids.
- 6:01Mykola Kuleba: They live in kindergarten and they lost everything in her son region and we reunited them and we want to find a house for them and help them to live normal life, for children to be educated well and to feel like a child.
- 6:23Mykola Kuleba: We've been children, we know what it is to be a happy child and I want all our Ukrainian children to return to normal life.
- 6:34Mykola Kuleba: That's why we can help more and we can rescue more, and if you can help us do this, we can do it together.
- 6:44Justin Alan Hayes: Thank you so much for your time.
- 6:45Justin Alan Hayes: Thank you so much.