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Investigations conducted by law enforcement officers determined that Russia has deported more than 9,000 children from Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said.
“Currently, as part of the investigations, 9,400 children deported by Russia from the territory of Ukraine have been identified,” Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin told Interfax-Ukraine in an interview.
“We understand that there are many more children who are victims of these crimes,” he added.
The forcible transfer of children from one national group to another with the aim of exterminating the former is considered genocide under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, according to Kostin.
“Therefore, during the investigation of these cases, in particular during the collection of evidence, we focus on the fact that such facts constitute both a war crime and an element of genocide,” Ukraine’s top prosecutor said.
Occupation authorities in Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region were accused this week of deporting Ukrainian children to Russia and the annexed Crimean Peninsula under the pretext of an autumn school break, Pravda reported.
Around 300 children from the occupied settlements of Enerhodar and Kamianka have already been deported, Ivan Fedorov, the Ukrainian mayor of Russian-occupied Melitopol, said during a national television broadcast Tuesday.
Ukrainian Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said in early September that Russia had deported 7,000 Ukrainian children to its territory at the time, according to a report by The New Voice of Ukraine.
While Russian law prohibits the adoption of foreign children, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree in May that made it easier for Russia to adopt and give citizenship to Ukrainian children without parental care.
The decree also makes it harder for Ukraine and the children’s surviving relatives to win them back, the Associated Press reported.
“Russia is doing everything to prevent our children from returning to us,” Kostin said.
Thousands of children have been transferred to Russia since the start of the invasion of Ukraine in late February to be adopted and become citizens, The New York Times reported.
Russian officials have made it clear that their goal is to replace any childhood attachment to home with a love for Russia, according to the outlet.
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