On the territory of Russia, according to various estimates, there are up to 730 thousand children abducted from the territory of Ukraine. The International Criminal Court (ICC) on March 17 issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin and children’s ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova for “illegal deportation of Ukrainian children”. RTVI has collected what is known about the evacuation of children and their future fate.
In June 2022, the head of the National Defense Control Center of the Russian Federation, Mikhail Mizintsev informed that since the start of the special operation, more than 300,000 children have been taken to the territory of Russia “from the dangerous regions of Ukraine and the Donbas republics”. In February 2023, according TASS, there were already more than 730,000 such children.
At the same time, the Ukrainian Ombudsman for Children Daria Gerasimchuk declared “RBC-Ukraine” that the actual numbers could be even higher. According to Gerasimchuk, the Office of the Commissioner for Children’s Rights has detailed information on 16,000 cases of children taken out of Ukraine, while 308 children were reportedly returned to their country of origin.
Research agency Conflict Observatory writing about at least 6,000 Ukrainian children brought to Russia for adoption and adaptation.
On Friday March 17, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Rights Ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova due to the Russian side taking children out of of the war zone in Ukraine.
Russian officials have stressed that they do not recognize the ICC and its jurisdiction, and the very issuance of warrants by presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov has called it “insignificant”.
Lvova-Belova called the ICC’s arrest warrant for its “assessment by the international community of its work to help the children of Russian citizens who are in war zones.”
Maria Lvova-Belova said on the Soloviev Live TV channel, that there are now 380 children in 19 regions of Russia who have been in social institutions in Ukraine for a long time. Now these children, she says, have been placed with families. At the same time, if the legal representatives of these children present themselves, the families will be reunited, underlined the children’s ombudsman. At least 15 children from eight families have already returned to their relatives from Ukrainian territory.
“We were approached by a father who was separated from his children, three children were in the Moscow region. During the day, we organized the arrival of the pope, the reunion with the children, the sending, and also financially, the supply of everything necessary. Dad is on Ukrainian territory and now he is giving interviews to everyone about the difficulty of transferring three children to the family,” Lvova-Belova said.
At the beginning of March, she informed that 89 Ukrainian children are in institutions in Crimea and the Krasnodar Territory, where they have been sent “on vacation and for protection from hostilities”. Now they are waiting to be reunited with their parents. The children were taken out of the war zone by proxy from their parents with attendants, the children’s ombudsman said.
The press service of the Commissioner for Children’s Rights of RTVI to the President of Russia stated that at the end of summer-autumn 2022, due to the situation on the front line, parents of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv regions and other territories voluntarily sent their children for rest and for protection from military actions.
“They, together with their escorts, by proxy of their parents, were accepted by sanatoriums and health camps in the Crimea and the Krasnodar Territory. The situation on the front line has not always made it possible to organize a safe trip for the children and their companions at the end of their shifts. Therefore, it took time for the guys to come back,” the press service explained.
Reunification difficulties also arise because not all parents can pick up a child alone, fathers of service age are not released by Ukrainian authorities, mothers cannot always travel due to the presence of ‘Other children, parents are embarrassed by their state of health, moreover, not everyone manages to find a trustworthy person who could come, said the press service of the Children’s Ombudsman of Russia.
“Volunteers from Russia and Ukraine help families. Despite all the difficulties, most of the children have already returned to their families. Moreover, they live both in Russia and Ukraine, as well as in EU countries. For this, the colleagues from the regions have done an excellent job. Staff members personally visited the children in Crimea to take further action against those who stayed longer than others. Now there is an action plan for each child,” the press service said.
They also clarified that as of March 20, 2023, 60 children remain in children’s camps in Russia, they receive everything necessary, most have contact with relatives.
“It is important to consider that non-governmental organizations in Ukraine do not communicate directly with us. Communication is provided by Russian volunteers and NGOs. It was possible to create such a voluntary bridge between countries for communication. We always intervene when administrative problems arise or additional assistance is needed,” noted the press service of the Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights.
Guardian Edition writing that Ukrainian families did send their children to summer camps in Crimea and the Krasnodar Territory, but the Russian side reportedly refused to send them back. Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Irina Vereshchuk Opened on March 18 applied to the Russian Commissioner for Human Rights Tatyana Moskalkova and the Ombudsman for Children Maria Lvova-Belova with a request for the transfer to Kiev of the lists of orphans and children left without parental care who are in the territory under Russian control and who were taken to Russia.
“Social media posts are not a means of communication between officials of the two countries. The Ukrainian side knows through which channels and how to submit a request to the commissioner. In addition, Ukraine has an adviser-commissioner for the rights of the child and his rehabilitation, Daria Gerasimchuk. And she, if she really needed information not for propaganda, not to create a myth about thousands of “abducted” children, but to help specific children and families to solve their problems quickly, she could also send his requests, and we would consider them. We are open in this regard,” the press service of the Russian Ombudsman for Children told RTVI.
The UN Commission of Inquiry considered the displacement of children from Ukrainian territory a war crime, since international humanitarian law prohibits the evacuation of children by one of the parties to the armed conflict (at the exception of certain cases), writing BBC Russian Service. According to the head of the commission, a former judge of the International Tribunal for Rwanda, the Supreme Court of Norway and the ECHR, Eric Möse, he studied the cases of 164 children and their families from the Donetsk, Kharkiv and Kherson regions. . Russian social services reportedly said the children would be placed with Russian families, leading Ukrainian children to “express serious fears” of being forever separated from their families.
Maria Lvova-Belova told the Public Chamber that she herself took a child from Mariupol into her family. She said that at first the children “talk negatively about the president (Putin), say all kinds of mean things, sing the anthem of Ukraine, ‘Glory to Ukraine’ and all that”, but then this negative , according to her, “transforms into love for Russia.
The Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine for Human Rights, Dmitry Lubinets, noted that the forcible transfer of children from one national group to another qualifies as genocide. However, Eric Möse claimed that he did not find in the actions of the Russian side regarding the export of children a policy of genocide in the legal sense of this concept.
Russia’s permanent representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya during a press conference on March 20, answering a question about the return of Ukrainian children to their homeland, declared that this will be possible when security conditions are met. He explained that Russia wanted to protect Ukrainian children “from the danger that military operations can represent”. In addition, Nebenzya called the problem of children “brought to Russia by force” inflated and said that Russia plans to clarify the situation “in the region” on April 6 at an informal meeting of the Security Council of the United States. ‘UN.
