The Russian commissioner for children, the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC), denied the illegal deportation of Ukrainian minors on Wednesday at a controversial informal meeting of the UN Security Council.
As soon as Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova spoke -by videoconference-, the representatives of various members of the Security Council got up from their chairs and left the meeting in protest.
The representatives of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Malta and Albania left the room, while the representatives of the other 11 members of the Security Council remained seated.
“We oppose this speaker (…), a woman accused of a war crime, who is involved in the deportation and kidnapping of children from their homes,” US ambassador Linda told the press before the meeting. Thomas-Greenfield.
According to the commissioner, since February 2022 – when Russia invaded Ukraine – various Russian regions have welcomed more than five million Ukrainians, of whom 700,000 were children.
“Everyone came with children, with parents, relatives or with their legal guardians. Among these children there were 2,000 from orphanages or foster homes. They came with their tutors or other people responsible for them, ”he argued.
“So far, around 1,300 children have been returned to their orphanages (of origin). Four hundred children, because these institutions are constantly bombarded by Ukraine, have been sent to Russian orphanages in different regions and are being cared for in these institutions and 358 children were placed in homes with guardians supervising custody,” Maria Lvova-Belova added. .
Throughout her presentation, the Russian commissioner also showed a video of alleged Ukrainian children receiving medical care and gifts on Russian soil, as well as their dynamics in foster families.
The veracity of the reports submitted by the Mission of the Russian Federation to the UN cannot be verified.
On the other hand, the Ukrainian authorities indicated that, until the end of last February, 16,221 children were deported to Russia, a figure that the UN Commission on Human Rights could not confirm.
Some of these children, according to Ukraine, were given up for adoption to Russian couples, who were directly contacted by the Kiev government to warn them that it knows their identity and that they should be held accountable for having offered to take care of these minors. illegally
This meeting, which did not take place in the room where the Security Council usually meets and which was not broadcast through official UN channels at the request of the United Kingdom, was involved in strong controversy, with dozens of countries opposing it. to your celebration.
Faced with the UK’s objection to allowing the meeting to be broadcast on official UN channels, Russia’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyanskiy, announced that “Russia will from now on block all UN broadcasts of all similar gatherings.
Today’s meeting was led by Russia’s permanent representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya, who accused several European countries, including Portugal, Germany and Spain, of illegal deportations of Ukrainian minors in the context of the war in the country.
But the only basis for the accusation presented were videos of testimonies from women, some of whom appeared with their faces covered and their voices distorted and whose veracity of the testimonies could not be verified.
“In European countries, Ukrainian refugees are being taken away from their children. (…) The number of people who have gone through this is in the hundreds. Small children are taken to reception centers by strangers. Mothers Those who try to recover the children are threatened with criminal prosecution,” the diplomat accused.
This Wednesday, fifty countries signed a joint declaration condemning this meeting.
“Today, Russia will once again abuse its powers and privileges as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council to spread disinformation about the widespread abduction and illegal forced deportation of thousands of Ukrainian children,” the 50 countries wrote in a statement.
Among the signatory nations, mostly European countries, are the United States of America, Portugal, Italy, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, Japan and New Zealand. However, there is a clear absence of Latin American, African or Asian states.
The only Latin American country that signed the declaration was Guatemala.
The ICC issued a landmark arrest warrant in March for President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, finding them responsible for the “war crime of illegal deportation” of Ukrainian minors.
Moscow claims to have “saved” these children from the fighting and has put in place procedures to reunite them with their families.
At a press conference held on Tuesday, the Russian Commissioner for Children expressed her willingness to return the deported children to Ukraine, if their families so request.
Maria Lvova-Belova assured that she was not contacted by “any representative of the Ukrainian power” regarding the children deported since the beginning of the war and invited their parents to write her an email.
Source: TSF
