President's Office comments on Vice News interview with Russian Children’s Rights Commissioner

The American media outlet Vice News has interviewed Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights, who has been issued with an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the deportation of Ukrainian children. Mykhailo Podoliak, Advisor to the Head of the President’s Office of Ukraine, called her words an illustration of "cannibalism".

Source: video by Vice News; Mykhailo Podoliak on Twitter

Details: Regarding the ICC warrant, Lvova-Belova said with a smile: "I am a mother. And that says it all. A war criminal? What are you talking about?"

After that, Lvova-Belova began to say, with barely contained anger, that Russia does not recognise the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, and the Geneva Convention gives the right to "evacuate" children from areas where there is a danger to their life and health.

The journalist remarked that the Geneva Convention also stipulates that people should be evacuated to a third country not involved in the conflict. 

Lvova-Belova replied: "The Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic [self-proclaimed and non-recognised formations in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts – ed.] were not part of Ukraine. They have been recognised as independent republics by our country."

The journalist noted that the problem stems from the definitions of what Russia is and isn’t, and who is Russian and who isn’t. Lvova-Belova shook her head, smiling, and said, "I don't understand."

Reacting to this interview, Podoliak stated that Russia is a "perfect model of hell".

Quote from Podoliak: "Maria Lvova-Belova, wanted by the ICC for war (genocidal) crimes, gives a laid-back interview to American journalists, where she talks about her ‘extraordinary mother's heart’ and is sincerely surprised by the accusations:

– We just came to their cities, destroyed their houses, killed and maimed their parents in front of them, sent them to filtration camps in remote regions where we severely abuse them and force them to listen to propaganda lectures, and supplemented this with... a second passport. Isn't this salvation? Isn't this about ‘Russian mercy’? Isn't this about justice? Don't we have the right to deprive them of their false identity?

It is impossible to think of a greater illustration of the word ‘cannibal’... "

Background:

• In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova for the deportation of Ukrainian children from occupied territories of Ukraine to Russia.
• Lvova-Belova claimed publicly that Filip, a teenage boy from the temporarily occupied city of Mariupol whom she had "adopted", had been influenced by Ukrainian "propaganda", but in spite of that, he is already calling her "mum".
• Russian secret services stopped a child from Mariupol who was on his way back to his homeland at the border with Belarus.
• Daria Herasymchuk, Ukrainian Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights and Child Rehabilitation, stated that abducted Ukrainian children face bullying and even physical violence on the grounds of their ethnicity in Russia.
• Russian invaders are trying to re-educate Ukrainian children. For example, in Mariupol, the occupiers force students to line up, listen to the terrorist state’s national anthem and raise the Russian flag.

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