From the war zone
Kremlin: 700,000 children brought to Russia so far
7/31/2023 8:22 p.m
According to the Kremlin, Russia wants hundreds of thousands of children “brought to safety” from the war zone. The UN and Ukraine speak of illegal deportations. Many children are unlikely to return to their homeland.
Russia says it has brought more than 700,000 Ukrainian children into its own country since the start of the full-scale invasion. This was announced by the so-called Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights in a report quoted by the “Moscow Times”. Since February 2022, around 4.8 million people from Ukraine and the Donbas (meaning the self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk) have come to Russia, including 700,000 children. Most of the children arrived with their parents or relatives.
At the beginning of July, the chairman of the international committee of the Russian Federation Council, Grigory Karasin, named the same number of children who had fled bombs and shelling in the conflict zones and found refuge in Russia. According to Ukraine, 19,492 Ukrainian children were illegally deported to Russia, but only a few hundred could be brought back. According to the latest report, 1,500 orphans were brought to Russia, 380 of whom have since been adopted.
A team of investigators assembled by the UN Human Rights Council pointed out in March that Russian authorities place Ukrainian children in orphanages or foster families and grant them Russian citizenship. Among other things, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree according to which children can become Russian citizens under certain conditions using a simplified procedure.
Arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court in The Hague have been issued against both Kremlin chief Putin and his children’s commissioner Maria Lwowa-Belowa for the kidnapping of minors – which is a war crime. The Kremlin rejects the arrest warrant as “void”.