Russian official charged with war crimes says Ukrainian kids can go home

United Nations: Russia’s children’s rights commissioner, who is being investigated for war crimes for deporting children from Ukraine, told a UN conference on Wednesday that the children were abducted for their protection and that Moscow is working with international groups to repatriate them to their families.

Western ambassadors skipped the informal UN Security Council meeting, instead sending low-level officials. As the commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, began to address the meeting via video connection, diplomats from the United States, UK, Albania, and Malta stormed out.

The International Criminal Court issued an arrest order for her and Russian President Vladimir Putin last month, accusing them of kidnapping Ukrainian children.

Russia, which holds the rotating presidency of the Security Council this month, called the meeting to counter what it claims is disinformation about the Ukrainian children.

Before the session, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters that the US strongly opposed the briefing and joined the UK in barring the UN from the outside broadcast of the discussion.

Lvova-Belova should not be allowed “to have an international podium to spread disinformation and to try to defend her horrible actions that are taking place in Ukraine,” Thomas-Greenfield said.

An Associated Press investigation, published in October, on Lvova-Belova’s involvement in the abduction of Ukrainian found the open effort to put Ukrainian children up for adoption in Russia was well underway.

It has been impossible to ascertain the actual number of Ukrainian minors sent to Russia. Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine’s UN ambassador, claimed on Twitter on Wednesday that more than 19,500 children have been taken from their homes or institutions and forcefully deported.

Russia’s ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said the aim of Wednesday’s meeting was “to unmask the blatant double standards of the West.”

“Part of this propaganda campaign is the hushing up by the West of the fact that in European countries Ukrainian refugees are having their children taken away,” he said. Videos were then shown of some women claiming their children had been taken in Europe.

Nebenzia further asserted that contrary to Western assertions, “no forced adoptions” had occurred. He stated that some Ukrainian youngsters are in foster care and that “no hurdles” exist for them to retain touch with their family in Ukraine.

According to the AP investigation, Russian authorities transferred Ukrainian children to Russia without their parent’s knowledge, lied to them that their parents didn’t want them, exploited them for propaganda, and provided them with Russian families and citizenship.

According to Lvova-Belova, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Russia has taken in almost 5 million Ukrainians, including 700,000 children, all of whom had parents, relatives, or legal guardians, with the exception of 2,000 from orphanages in the eastern Donbas.

She stated that around 1,300 children have been returned to their orphanages, 400 have been transported to Russian orphanages, and 358 have been put in foster families.

Lvova-Belova stated that her office has met with officials of UNICEF, Refugees International, and the Red Cross and gave all relevant information regarding the children. She stated that Russia was working on the reunion with the Red Cross.

Sarah Sheffer, vice president for strategic outreach at Refugees International, denied this. She said Russia has not consulted with her organization about the Ukrainian children.

UNICEF and the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is responsible for reuniting families, did not respond immediately to requests for confirmation of Lvova-Belova’s comments.

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