Ukraine's Presidential Commissioner names 6 Russian scenarios for abduction of Ukrainian children
Russia employs a minimum of six scenarios to relocate Ukrainian children to its territory, one of which involves fabricating a medical diagnosis.
Source: Daria Herasymchuk, Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights and Child Rehabilitation
Herasymchuk said that the Russians also use the following scenarios to kidnap Ukrainian children:
- first, they kill the parents, and then they take the children to their territory;
- take children from their biological family;
- separate children from their families during so-called filtering operations;
- create conditions in the occupied territories that are unsuitable for a child's life, and then, as it were, offer parents to voluntarily send their children off for so-called rehabilitation or rest, from which they are not returned home.
Herasymchuk said that another scenario involves the relocation of entire specialised institutions where Ukrainian children resided, to Russia. In this case, the Russians do not allow Ukraine the opportunity to evacuate its children to the Kyiv-controlled territory.
The commissioner said that the Russians also transport children to the territory of Belarus and Russia after falsely diagnosing them with conditions that the child does not have and saying that "this diagnosis requires treatment or rehabilitation away from home".
On 17 March 2023, the deportation of Ukrainian children led the International Criminal Court in The Hague to issue an arrest warrant for Maria Lvova-Belova, Children's Rights Commissioner for the President of the Russian Federation, and Vladimir Putin himself.
The Belarusian Red Cross acknowledges that they are taking children from Ukraine. In Russia, kidnapped Ukrainian children are subjected to psychological abuse, insulted for being Ukrainian, and even physically abused for disobedience.
Ukraine has managed to repatriate 387 out of nearly 20,000 children abducted by Russia.
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