A humanitarian evacuation intended to shield Ukrainian orphans due to Russia’s full-scale invasion has become a legal battlefield, pitting the government in Kyiv against the Italian judicial system over who ultimately holds the legal right to determine the children’s future, CNN reported. The Sumy evacuation The dispute centers on a group of 25 minors evacuated from a children’s home in Sumy, northern Ukraine, during the chaotic early weeks of the war. Liubov Rudyka, director of the home and the children’s legal guardian under Ukrainian law, transported the group to Naples in the summer of 2022, believing it to be a temporary measure.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. “I thought it would be like a summer camp: the children would spend some time in Italy and then return,” Rudyka explained. However, upon arrival, Italian authorities applied domestic child protection laws formulated during the European migrant crisis. According to legal records, Italian courts did not recognize Rudyka’s Ukrainian guardianship. Instead, the courts classified the evacuated youths as “unaccompanied minors,” granted them official refugee status, and assigned them Italian legal guardians and host families. ‘No different from the Russian position’ Over the past four years, as the Ukrainian government has attempted to organize the repatriation of the children to stabilized regions of Ukraine, they have been repeatedly blocked by Italian juvenile courts.