He was walking alone, a sled in his hands. The Yekaterinburg police described how they searched for the children on Christmas night.

      The results of the preventive operation "Curfew Patrol" in Yekaterinburg were reported by the press office of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Ural capital.

      The aim of the raids carried out as part of the operational-preventive operation "Curfew Patrol" was to prevent unlawful behavior by minors and to prevent crimes against minors themselves. The raids targeted teenagers found outside their homes at night without adult supervision.

      From January 3 to 9, 82 minors were taken to the police stations of Yekaterinburg. Of these, 2 came from other regions of the Russian Federation and 2 were citizens of foreign countries.

      The majority of those taken in (56 people) were outside their homes at night without their legal guardians.

      Mobile teams checked more than 750 places (courtyard playgrounds, building entrances, attics, basements of residential buildings, retail outlets, construction sites, abandoned buildings, transport facilities).

      Thus, during the raid on Christmas night, after 10:00 p.m., in the area of the shopping center on Shvarts Street, four young children were stopped by juvenile affairs officers of Police Department No. 12. Two 11-year-old boys were in a retail outlet at about 10:30 p.m. They admitted that they had asked to go play in the yard on Monterskaya Street (Vtorchermet), but had gone instead to a small shop selling Chinese candies in the mall.

      The parents had allowed their sons to be outside until 9:00 p.m., but an hour and a half after that time no one had checked on the children. The legal guardians of the curfew violators were summoned to the scene by the police. They had difficulty explaining why their children were outside so late. Although the adults tried to shift the blame onto the disobedient boys, the juvenile officers reminded them that parents are responsible for their children.

      Just minutes after administrative reports had been drawn up for the first offenders, police saw another child on the street. An eight-year-old boy, completely alone, was walking through the darkness and snowstorm with a sled in his hands.

      When asked where his parents were, the child replied that his mother had gone to the store. It turned out that earlier he had been sledding with his mother on the hill next to the mall. At about 11:00 p.m. the woman needed to go in for groceries, and she apparently thought it best to send the child home alone.

      "After the police found the mother in the shopping area, she began inventing absurd excuses. In particular, she said that her son had simply fallen behind and gotten lost on the street. At the same time she, for some reason, continued calmly choosing groceries and did not hurry to search for the boy," the press office of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs for Yekaterinburg reported.

      Around midnight the patrol noticed a short young man at the "Savva Belykh" stop trying to hail a taxi. The police decided to make sure he was an adult and upon closer inspection found that he was a 12-year-old child. The boy, freezing in the wind, tried to convince the police that he was fine, that he would catch a car and get home to Shcherbakova Street. He had neither a phone nor any cash on him.

      When the young "traveler" was taken home, it turned out that his family was already on record with the authorities. The mother admitted that this was not the first time her son had come home after 10:00 p.m., and therefore she had not worried about him that day, even though it was already past midnight.