As part of the Kremlin’s campaign to reduce orphanhood, Russia’s children’s rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova said she has given “particular attention” to families of men fighting in Ukraine. But while official reports present the children of soldiers as secure and protected, accounts from regional ombudspersons indicate otherwise. These stories reviewed by The Moscow Times reveal families left in poverty, children shuffled between relatives and institutions and widows navigating a bureaucracy that often strips them of support once a husband or father is killed or declared missing in action. The Moscow Times has asked Lvova-Belova’s office for comment. In the Sakhalin region, a single mother of two sought help after both of her former partners disappeared from her children’s lives.
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