According to a procedure Qatar has put up to return many more children from Russia to Ukraine, three Ukrainian youngsters transferred to Russia would be returned to Qatari diplomats in Moscow this week, a Qatari official briefed on the arrangements told Reuters on Monday.

Another 7-year-old Ukrainian boy who was reunited with his grandmother and is traveling back to Ukraine via Estonia was helped by Qatar on Friday, according to the official. The other three kids are a girl, 17, a boy, 2, and 9, respectively.

Without the permission of their families or guardians, 20,000 children have been transported to Russia or Russian-held territory, according to Kyiv. The Qatari official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the process, said that the homecoming of these first four youngsters tested a mechanism that the Gulf Arab state devised following months of private negotiations with Moscow and Kyiv.

In a statement, Lolwah Al Khater, the minister of state for international cooperation for Qatar, acknowledged the mediation and referred to this week’s repatriations as “only a first step.”

According to the source, a group of Qatari diplomats who confirmed each child’s identification received a brief list of Ukrainian children who needed repatriation from the Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova.

The official said it is unclear how many children beyond the first four that Russia will permit to return to Ukraine through the Qatari method.

Since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022, some 400 children have been sent back, but the UN Office for Human Rights expressed alarm last week that there was no procedure to make the homecoming easier. The initial four kids “were the first ones verified, and (Russia and Ukraine) agreed they found their parents,” the person added.

The official stated that Qatari officials would escort the kids across the border with Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, or Qatar on a chartered flight before returning to Ukraine. The Qatari official stated that “both Ukrainian and Russian officials have been cooperative,” adding that Ukraine contacted the Gulf Arab nation to arbitrate with Russia on the youngsters.

Qatar, a tiny but affluent oil superpower with aspirational foreign policy objectives, has recently been at the forefront of international diplomacy for arranging a prisoner swap between the United States and Iran and mediating between Israel and Hamas terrorists about the prospective release of Israeli captives in Gaza.

The 7-year-old youngster was in Russia at a children’s home “as a result of being separated from his mother who was in Russia when the war broke out,” the source said. The boy was reunited with his grandmother on Friday.

In March, Vladimir Putin received an arrest request from the International Criminal Court (ICC), which accused him of committing a war crime by forcibly removing hundreds of children from Ukraine.

Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s representative to the United Nations in New York, stated shortly after that parents may request assistance to be reunited with their children and that Russia did not block youngsters from contacting family members and friends, wherever they resided.