In Berlin, Ukrainian Ambassador Makeiev accuses Russia of deporting thousands of children from Ukraine in order to re-educate them in Russia. The goal is the “destruction of a people,” says a Ukraine expert.
According to Ukrainian information, Russia has kidnapped almost 20,000 children from Ukraine. At a discussion in the German Bundestag, Ukrainian Ambassador Oleksii Makeiev said that as of today, Russia had deported 19,546 children from Ukraine to Russia.
Makeiev made the comments at an event hosted by the FDP-affiliated Naumann Foundation and the CDU-affiliated Adenauer Foundation. He referred to one Ukrainian government count, which is updated every morning, as Daria Herasymchuk, the Ukrainian presidential representative for children’s rights and child rehabilitation, said at the same event. She explained that this number is preliminary.
FDP member of the Bundestag Marcus Faber pointed out that Russia itself said it had “rescued” 700,000 children from Ukraine. Faber recounted encounters at the Kherson Children’s Hospital, where nurses told him they simulated treatment of children so that these children would not be abducted.
19,546 names
Makeiev said the Ukrainian government had no confirmation of the Russian figure. The ambassador emphasized: “We care about every child.” However, he did not rule out the possibility that the number of unreported cases is higher. Ukraine has names and information for the 19,546 children he mentioned.
In March, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian children’s rights representative Maria Lwowa-Belova. Both are allegedly responsible for the illegal deportation of children to Russia, the court said.
Former Green Party politician Marieluise Beck, now a board member of the Center for Liberal Modernity, said that Russia wanted to use the high numbers of supposedly “rescued” children to suggest that Ukrainians found protection in “Motherland Russia.” Beck had just returned from a trip to Ukraine. She said there were “targeted, arbitrary separations of families and children” in the occupied territories of Ukraine. After that, a “Russification of these children” will take place in Russia. Contrary to what Russian propaganda portrays, these children are usually not given to families, but to orphanages.
“Cultural destruction is also destruction”
Ukrainian Children’s Rights Commissioner Herasymchuk reported that there are six ways children are trafficked from Ukraine to Russia: Children are brought to Russia after their parents are killed; Children would simply be kidnapped; Children would be taken to “recovery camps,” sometimes with parental consent, sometimes without; Families with children are being forced to go to Russia because humanitarian escape corridors are not being kept open – as happened in Mariupol; and finally there are kidnappings from institutions for children such as children’s hospitals.
According to Ukrainian figures, 386 abducted children have been returned to Ukraine so far. Beck said this work also involved “tiny” Russian civil rights groups that went “undercover” in search of kidnapped children. She called the crime of kidnapping children “a genocidal warfare with the aim of destroying a people.” Unlike classic genocides such as the Holocaust, this is not about the murder of people, but rather about cultural destruction, “but cultural destruction is also destruction.”
Ukraine needs weapons, not resolutions
When the panel, moderated by “Bild” journalist Paul Ronzheimer, came to the question of what Germany could do to stop the deportations, it became clear how closely this topic is linked to the dispute over arms deliveries. With regard to the proposal to pass a resolution in the Bundestag, Marieluise Beck said that this would be pointless “as long as we do not say that Ukraine should win the war – and the federal government is not saying that.” As long as Germany is not prepared to provide greater support to Ukraine, “we simply have to acknowledge that this unchecked violence will continue.”
The position was supported by CDU defense expert Roderich Kiesewetter. Alluding to the Germany pact proposed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Kiesewetter said there must be a pact “that this war will be concluded as quickly as possible within the 1991 borders for Ukraine.” He criticized the repeatedly expressed concern that Germany should not become a party to the war: “We are a target of war, and if we do not want to become a party to the war, we must do everything we can to ensure that the rules-based order is restored.”