A girl abducted and unlawfully taken to Russia's Kaliningrad by her father has been returned to Lithuania, the National Crisis Management Centre (NKVC) has confirmed.
“The girl is already in Lithuania,” it said on Tuesday evening.
Social Security and Labour Minister Monika Navickienė later said that the girl and her mother are feeling well.
“This is really touching news and I am very grateful to all Lithuanian institutions,” the minister told LRT TV. “I think that today we can celebrate our victory because the mother and the child have reached their homeland safely.”
Navickienė said she could not disclose the details of the girl’s return to Lithuania, but noted that the operation was complicated and involved many people and institutions.
The 9-month-old girl has not suffered any health problems, according to Ilma Skuodienė, head of the State Child Rights Protection and Adoption Service.
“The girl is really safe and there seems to be no real health problems or other things,” she told LRT TV.
The girl’s mother travelled to Russia on Tuesday to take her daughter back home.
According to Skuodienė, this experience has been an extraordinary shock for both the mother and the little girl, so they will continue to receive all the necessary assistance.
“Today, we agreed to stay in touch to see what assistance the girl and her mother need,” she said. “The most important thing now is that they get some rest, and we are ready to help as much as we can.”
In her words, Russia’s child rights authorities had collaborated with Lithuanian agencies “from the very beginning”, providing the necessary information and “actively participating in providing assistance and reuniting the girl with her mother.”
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda on Tuesday evening thanked the authorities for their work and efforts.
“Good news tonight: the girl who was unlawfully taken to Russia is already in Lithuania with her mother,” the president posted on Facebook. “I thank all the authorities for their sincere work and efforts to return the child to her homeland as quickly as possible.”
Lithuania’s law enforcement launched a pre-trial investigation into the suspected child abduction after the girl’s mother, who has custody of the child, complained to the Klaipėda district police on August 27 that the father had taken their daughter and failed to return her at the agreed time.
Based on information available to the authorities, the man and his daughter crossed the Skirvytė River, which marks the state border between Lithuania and Russia, by boat on the same day.
A Lithuanian court last Friday issued an in absentia arrest warrant for the man on suspicions of child abduction and illegal border crossing.
Terrible conditions
Lithuanian authorities say they were surprised that the situation was resolved relatively quickly. One of the reasons why the Russian officials decided to hand the baby over to the mother was the conditions in which the father kept the child, according to Aušra Černevičienė, Lithuanian Consul General in Kaliningrad.
The father, however, was not cooperative, Černevičienė said. Before the mother arrived in Kaliningrad, Russian officials had not taken a decision on whether to return the child to her, she said.
“The mother’s role, concentration, and preparedness were very important,” she told LRT TV.
“I think that the image that the authorities themselves saw of where the girl and her father stayed played a huge role in this story. [...] From the picture drawn by the lawyer, we realised that the conditions in which the girl was kept were very terrible,” the consul general added.
According to her, the baby’s mother travelled to Kaliningrad together with her father, the girl’s grandfather, accompanied by a lawyer and Lithuanian officials.
The meeting with the child and the father took place in a neutral location near Sovetsk, where Švanys stayed.
“The child was handed over to the mother to be fed. While the father was being interviewed by the police, the decision was made to take the child and the mother away in the lawyer’s car,” Černevičienė said.
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