Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations on Wednesday accused Portugal, Spain and Germany of taking “hundreds” of Ukrainian children from their mothers to place in shelters in their respective territories after presenting testimonies of these alleged cases.
“I am Alina Komisarenko, from the city of Zaporijia. My son has been taken by the youth system in Portugal,” a woman said in a video presented by Russia at an informal meeting of the Security Council to discuss “the measures taken by the Russian authorities have taken to remove children at risk”.
The veracity of the testimonies of the mission of the Russian Federation to the UN cannot be verified.
Russian ambassador Vasily Nebenzya, whose country presides over the UN Security Council this month, accused Western countries of trying to suppress the taking of children from Ukrainian refugees in European countries.
The ambassador then mentioned Portugal, Spain and Germany as examples of countries where this is happening.
“The number of people who have experienced this runs into the hundreds. Small children are taken to shelters by strangers. Mothers who try to get the children back are threatened with criminal prosecution”accused the diplomat.
On March 17, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin on war crimes charges for his alleged involvement in child abductions in Ukraine.
In a statement, the ICC accuses Putin of being “allegedly responsible for the war crime of illegal deportation of population (children) and illegal transfer of population (children) from occupied territories of Ukraine to the Russian Federation”.
At stake are thousands of Ukrainian children who were forcibly transported to Russia or to Ukrainian territories occupied by Russian troops.
A report on Russia’s Systematic Program for the Re-education and Adoption of Children from Ukraine, released in February by the Humanitarian Research Laboratory at the Yale School of Public Health (HRL), estimates that more than 6,000 Ukrainian minors are being placed in 43 re-education or Russian orphanages after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The report admits that the number could be much higher.
The non-governmental organization (NGO) Human Rights Watch (HRW) claims in another report that thousands of Ukrainian children living in orphanages were forcibly transferred to Russia or the occupied territories.
According to Ukrainian authorities, 16,221 children had been deported to Russia by the end of February, a number the UN Human Rights Commission was unable to confirm.
Source: DN
