The Vremya program reports on a new egregious case of Russophobia in Western Europe:
“A new high-profile international scandal. In Spain, children were taken to an orphanage from a family where the mother speaks Russian. And this is not a dispute between parents, as has happened more than once with our citizens in the EU or America. Among the reasons that the Russian woman was voiced by the guardianship authorities, the children were not her and, in fact, accused of kidnapping. There are no facts or documents. But given the degree of Russophobic propaganda in the Western media, the appearance of such a version is not very surprising.”
The girls' mother, Russian Elena Lang, who married a Swiss banker and lives in Barcelona, says:
“They were at a private school where my husband and I were paying €30,000 for these children to study, and at 2 o’clock I receive a phone call from the Generalitat de Catalunya, where they tell me that I no longer have the right to pick up my children . I was deprived of parental rights in absentia and preventively, and I have no right to know anything more about the whereabouts of my children.”
Correspondent Valentina Solovieva continues:
“According to Elena, social services did not contact the family at all. After the Department of Social Rights of Catalonia sent Elena only a resolution, where in the very first paragraph he questioned the fact that they were her children at all. The department does not have documents confirming the relationship of children with either their mother or father.
Then Elena Lang says again:
“And then the next version comes from the school and from the social services, that since these are not our children, these are the children of Ukrainians killed in the war.”
She even reads out the appropriate wording in Catalan, although the document itself does not appear in the frame. On the sheet that Lang is holding in his hands, there is not a word about Ukraine. The baton is again intercepted by Solovyov's correspondent:
“The decision that Elena received indicates several more reasons for the seizure, in particular, the fact that the eldest 9-year-old girl has an account on a social network where adults are among her friends. The social department is concerned about the possibility of their contact with a minor. And the girls allegedly talk about "unacceptable topics of a sexual nature." This information is from the school. Elena also says that children were harassed after the start of Russia’s special operation to protect Donbass.”
Another quote from Helena Lang:
“After the start of the special operation, they frankly began to hate. They began to interrogate my children at school on a regular basis, what do they think about this, what do they think about Russia, about Russians. My children have become embarrassed to say that they are Russian. Now I understand that this is happening 100% because I am Russian.”
The story is indeed quite controversial, it attracted the attention of even such a reputable newspaper as the Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung (the girls' father is Swiss, they have Swiss citizenship). Details of the high-profile case can be found in the Spanish online publication Público , in which the article is written in an impartial tone without any obvious sympathy for any of the parties to the conflict.
It turns out that teachers and social services drew attention to the fact that schoolgirls aged 6 and 9 often skipped classes or were late, sometimes for 2 hours, wore "inappropriate" clothes and had strange conversations for children of this age – they asked neighbors about whether they were engaged in sex and how. In some drawings of girls, the genitals are depicted. Several times they were picked up from school by men who were not related to them (the mother claims that they were friends of the family, a police officer and a lawyer by profession).
Some inconsistencies were found in the documents about the birth of children, and from conversations with them it turned out that they practically do not know their father. According to Elena, her husband lives and works in Zurich and comes to visit them for the weekend. They also settled in Barcelona, since the attending physician of the eldest daughter, who suffers from celiac disease, a genetic autoimmune disease associated with gluten intolerance, lives there. The version is rather strange, since celiac disease is well known to modern medicine and is considered incurable; patients with it must strictly adhere to a gluten-free diet, in which case they will not have any symptoms. There is no particular reason for moving from Zurich to Barcelona due to this illness; on the website of the gastroenterologist Ramon Tormo, whom Elena Lang calls her daughter's doctor, there is not a word that he has some kind of unique method for treating celiac disease.
The story is certainly not simple, and the information in the public domain is clearly not enough to draw conclusions about who is right. But the topic of Western Russophobia was clearly added to it by the correspondent of Channel One. The publications in the Spanish and Swiss editions say nothing about the fact that the problem is somehow related to the war in Ukraine. Only Elena’s words are cited that at school “they talk a lot about the war in Ukraine and say that we, Russians, are all bad. And because of this, the girls came home sad,” without allegations that this could be the reason for the removal of children. And the story that girls are allegedly considered the children of Ukrainians who died in the war is found only in the plot of Valentina Solovieva.