GENEVA (AFP) : Russia insisted at the United Nations on Tuesday that it had not forcibly moved any Ukrainian children to Russia since its invasion in February 2022, contradicting claims by Kyiv and NGOs.
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child asked Moscow how many children have been “evacuated” to Russia or within Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine since the invasion began.
Kyiv estimates that 20,000 Ukrainian children have been forcibly moved to Russia.
“From February 2022, since then, the Russian Federation has not been involved in the deportation of citizens of Ukraine on the territory of the Russian Federation,” Alexey Vovchenko, Russia’s deputy minister of labor and social protection, told the UN committee.
The panel of 18 independent experts is examining Russia’s record as part of a regular review that all countries have to undergo.
“Just over three million residents of Ukraine — a number of them were children — these were accepted into the Russian Federation,” said Vovchenko, head of Moscow’s delegation at the hearing.
“Most of the children came with their families or the guardians. They were placed in temporary shelters or with relatives.”
But he indicated that checks were under way concerning the situation of “over 5,000 children.”
Of the children moved by Russia since the invasion, only about 400 have so far been repatriated, says Kyiv.
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against President Vladimir Putin in March 2023 on the war crime accusation of unlawfully deporting Ukrainian children.
The ICC has levelled similar charges against Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s presidential commissioner for children’s rights.
Russia is not a member of the ICC and insists the warrant against Putin is “void.”
“Placements for evacuated children are arranged, first and foremost, at their request and with their consent,” Russia told the UN committee in a written response in October last year.
As for the eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, which the Kremlin says are now part of Russia, Vovchenko said around 2,000 residents of orphanages and boarding homes were “moved to the Russian Federation.”
They were “accompanied with the directors and staff of the boarding homes where they had lived previously,” he said.
“Ukrainian authorities previous to this were not particularly concerned, we believe, by the state or health of these individuals,” the minister added.
Responding to committee questions, Vovchenko said it was not known how many Russian children had lost their fathers fighting in Ukraine.
