MOSCOW, April 15 (RAPSI) – Chair of the Presidential Human Rights Council's standing commission on international cooperation in the sphere of human rights Alexander Brod has turned to U.S. Ambassador in Russia John Sullivan on behalf of NGO Lawyers for Human Rights and Dignified Life seeking his assistance in returning back home Russian schoolchildren.

As it became known earlier, several dozens of Russian school children, who since last autumn had stayed in the U.S. for taking student courses, were stranded in the country because their educational residence programs had been cancelled because of the pandemic. Now, according to Brod, Russian Embassy in the U.S. receives petitions for return of Russian minors.

The rights advocate states that Russia’s Foreign Ministry has not been informed about either the existence of such programs, or the fact that schoolchildren from Russia have travelled to the U.S. to take the respective courses; Brod is concerned that the host party is in no way responsible for the children, whereas U.S. authorities have failed to make a list of the schoolchildren seeking repatriation.

The Council’s commission Chair asks the Ambassador to ensure that Russian children have adequate living conditions and are protected from the coronavirus pandemic, as well as to inform the relevant U.S. authorities about rights activists concerns and urge such authorities to assist in returning children back to their homeland, according to Brod’s address.