Boys Abandoned By Dad In Airport Return To School

Story By: Anastasia SmirnovaSub-EditorJoseph Golder, Agency: Central European News

The sons of a penniless Russian dad who hit the headlines for dumping his children at a Moscow airport have now been admitted to a school and a nursery.

The man and the two boys Ivan, aged six and Ivan, nine had been snapped on an escalator by CCTV cameras at Moscow Sheremetyevo airport shortly after they arrived, and later the boys were found abandoned with just rucksacks containing their birth certificates, but no father.

There was also a copy of a passport reportedly from the dad which identified him as 41-year-old Victor Gavrilov from the Russian city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur in the Far East of the country.

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There was also a note inside that read: “Please help my children. Please place them in a temporary shelter, because at the moment I have a very difficult financial situation. I’ll pick them up later. I ask that the children not be separated. The children’s documents are in the backpack. Sorry, but at the moment I have no other choice.”

He also requested that the boys be put into care and not given to their mother from whom he was separated.

Airport authorities handed the children over to police, and they were then moved to a hospital to be checked over and looked after.

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Local media now report that both of the boys have been admitted to educational institutions in their home town.

Representatives of the city administration of Komsomolsk-on-Amur said: “The boys have been admitted to school and nursery, their grandmother has inspected the latter one yesterday.”

Reports say that the boys’ mother Olga Pushkareva, whose age was not given, does not communicate with her children and lives her own life.

She told police that her estranged husband had refused to allow her to see the children, adding: “He said he won’t give me the kids as he can take care of them on his own.”

However, Irina Svyatkina, the head of the Komsomolsk-on-Amur Guardianship Department confirmed that it appeared the mother had removed herself from the children’s lives and had started a new life without them.

She said: “Olga had not been involved in the children’s lives. It was only her parents who were seeing them from time to time.”

The father is being investigated under article 125 of the Criminal Code (“Abandonment”), which has a potential sentence of up to one year in prison.

The authorities have to find out why the family, in which everything was clearly falling apart, had not been under the care of social services.

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