President of Ukraine said that during the Istanbul negotiations, Russian representatives dismissed the issue of abducted Ukrainian children as a “show for childless European old ladies”.

“I want our journalists, our people - and not only ours - to understand their attitude toward the humanitarian aspect. They told us not to ‘put on a show for childless European old ladies’ - that’s how they phrased it in Russian. That’s their attitude when we raise the issue of the children”, - said Volodymyr Zelensky.

During the second round of peace talks in Istanbul on June 2, Vladimir Medinsky, aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin and head of Russia’s delegation, presented a list submitted by Ukraine containing the names of 339 children it says were abducted by Russia and must be returned. He rejected the allegations, denying that Russia had taken the children by force.

Ukraine has documented over 19,500 cases of children who were forcibly taken to Russia, Belarus, or occupied territories since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in February 2022. According to official figures, only about 1,300 of them have been brought back to areas under Ukrainian control. These actions have faced widespread international backlash.

“We told them they had stolen 20,000 children, and they responded that it wasn’t 20,000 - at most, they said, it was a matter of a few hundred. Our delegation was offended by this... Honestly, I’m not. I think it’s more important not to fixate on the number, but on the fact itself - they admitted to taking children. We believe it’s thousands, they say it’s hundreds, but what matters is that they acknowledged the fact”, - explained the President of Ukraine.