Zelenska Foundation head tells i24NEWS about saving Ukrainian war orphans

The director of the Zelenska Foundation, Nina Horbachova, spoke with i24NEWS about the challenges of taking care of thousands of orphans amid the ongoing Russian invasion. 

Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska founded the organization after the start of the full-fledged invasion to help people in Ukraine in three sectors: Education, medicine, and humanitarian assistance. Its current main project is finding a home for every orphan and supporting family-type orphanages.

According to Horbachova, there are approximately 25,000 children in orphanages and boarding houses in Ukraine. Another 10,000 children are placed in family-type orphanages. Many of them have been displaced by the war. 

“For us, this is a very painful issue because the future is in our children, and the fact that children lose their homes, lose their parents, their relatives, it is not some accidental missile that hit the house, it is a system, it is the Russian way of waging a war,” she said. 

Horbachova added that thousands of children have been “kidnapped by Russia.”

“Our authorities are dealing with returning children… In Russia, there are approximately 16,222 children, if I’m not mistaken, and that is just official data. It is what we know and this number is radically different from what Russia is announcing,” she said. 

According to Horbachova, Ukraine has managed to return 129 children who were forcibly taken to Russia. Kyiv has previously accused Moscow of “genocide” based on the relocation of thousands of children from the occupied regions of Ukraine to Russian territory. The Kremlin has denied these claims, saying it was “saving” these children.