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EU Warns Russia Over Abduction of Ukrainian Children

Putin Russia
President of Russia Vladimir Putin Meeting with members of the Government (via videoconference).

Writing on Twitter, the head of the European Union Delegation to Ukraine, Matti Maasikas, criticized the Russian Federation for allegedly kidnapping Ukrainian children and forcing them to be adopted by Russian families.

Maasikas said Russia’s actions were a violation of international law.

“After Ukraine’s journalists, activists, local officials, other civilians, Russia has begun to abduct Ukrainian children. This, as well as their planned so-called ‘adoption’ by Russian families, is yet another cynical, appalling violation of International Humanitarian Law. Russia will be held accountable,” Maasikas said.

Does Russia Want to Make Ukrainian Children Russians?

Earlier in March, the United States Embassy in Kyiv accused Russia of kidnapping thousands of children from Ukraine, as well as multiple local officials.

“According to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Russian forces have illegally removed 2,389 Ukrainian children from Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts to Russia,” the embassy wrote on Twitter. “This is not assistance. It is kidnapping.”

Ukraine accused Russia in March of kidnapping children from the city of Mariupol – which has since been almost entirely destroyed by Russian forces.

Speaking to Times Radio, Ukrainian Member of Parliament Inna Sovsun said that children and adults are being taken by Russian troops.

“They’re taking Ukrainian citizens, sending them through what are called filtration camps, and then relocating them to distant parts of Russia to work for free,” she said. “This is the logic of Nazi Germany.”

Russian Senator Lilia Gumerova drew criticism this week after expressing her shock that many Ukrainian children taken from Ukraine’s cities – which she described as “liberated territories” – did not speak fluent Russia.

Part of Russia’s negotiations with Ukraine over a possible ceasefire includes a discussion over whether Russia should be considered an official language in Ukraine, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his government’s representatives have rejected.

In a testimony that went viral this week, Senator Gumerova said that Ukrainians “adopted” by Russians will go through summer schooling to “liberate their tongues” and learn Russian.

If Russia is incapable of conquering Ukraine and establishing the independence of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, it is unclear what will happen to children taken from Ukraine.

In the meantime, Russia has an opportunity to shape the minds of thousands of young Ukrainians – which could be the entire reason this is happening.

The Kremlin demonstrated its ability to shape the minds of young Russians last month when a video was published by Russian students from the elite Moscow State Institute of International Relations. In the video, students address the people of Russia and parroted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claims that Ukraine is responsible for the aggression in the region.

“We want to live with our Ukrainian peers in peace and brotherhood which has existed between us for centuries,” one student said in the video.

Another student stated that Russia had initiated a “special military operation” in Ukraine to facilitate the “denazification of Ukraine,” to confirm Ukraine’s neutral status and recognize Crimea as Russian territory.

Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.

Written By

Jack Buckby is 19FortyFive's Breaking News Editor. He is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.

5 Comments

5 Comments

  1. Alex

    April 16, 2022 at 8:32 pm

    I hope that this article is not a figment of the author’s imagination, but he read it somewhere and believed it. After all, only a mentally retarded person can come up with such a thing.

  2. Vladolph Putler

    April 18, 2022 at 10:20 am

    Agree completely. Only a mentally retarded person would pursue such bizarrely immoral behavior. But to be charitable, I think Russian trolls are more delusional than mentally retarded.

    Oh wait, you meant something else, didn’t you? :O Maybe you are a little retarded.

  3. CK

    April 20, 2022 at 4:49 pm

    You gotta love the fact Alex thinks this is outlandish, but none of the nonsense he spouts all day is.

    And it’s the Ukrainians that are the Nazis… only in Alex’s world.

  4. Alex

    April 21, 2022 at 1:05 am

    Ukrainians are Eastern Slavs. Good, hardworking people. The words of the current deputies of Ukraine: “Ukrainians and other peoples of the west of the country live in Ukraine.” This is noticeable when in the east of Ukraine a pure Ukarin language is heard, and in the west a wild mixture of Ukrainian surzhik, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, Moldavian, Slovak, Gypsy, Hebrew. It is there that the Urukhai live – Bandera Nazis, who left their home in the west and came to kill and rob Ukrainians in the east. After all, the Urukhai never knew how to work. But they forgot that the Ukrainians of the East are not only working people, but also Cossacks. And they got Urukhai in their Bandera muzzle. Glory to the Ukrainians! Death to Bandera Nazis!

  5. CK

    April 29, 2022 at 2:28 pm

    Ah, I see your tactic. You add a little shitty first paragraph so it doesn’t detect your duplicate post. Is this what it has come to now, you just posting the same exact post 2, 3, 4, 5 times per article?

    Wow, did they run out of paper in Russia, Alex? You guys can’t print new material? Literally using the same lines, over and over again, and now in duplicate in every post!

    Are you so defeated you can’t even come up with anything new? How sad. Now the idiot is talking about lend-lease at the end of his post, because he literally just copy + pasted it from another thread, with zero relevance to this one.

    Here’s a reminder:

    If someone wanted to know the truth about anything in Ukraine Alex, the last person they would go to is you.

    Paragraphs and paragraphs of bollocks, dubious claims about “independent journalists”, random documentarians, conspiracy theorists, deluded claims that of course, have no backup, lie after lie after lie.

    Classical Kremlin troll approach. Just flood the internet, the comments, the media, with tosh, doesn’t matter what it is, just make sure you write some old nonsense. Make sure to say the claim is supported by some dude in Germany, France, the states. If it’s a “documentary” (usually from youtube) then the better.

    Anything that victimises Russia, always the victim, always the bullied, never the problem. It’s always the Nazis. It’s always some pseudo-historical point.

    Anyone that has had the misfortune to study your “tactics” sees the forest for the trees, the pattern of lies, disinformation, blanketing of random claims, deflection, obfuscation, and other words beyond your vocabulary.

    It’s hopeless Alex. Your lies are as short as your intellect. What a pathetic job, to sit in your government shed, spreading your pathetic, government lies.

    A pathetic job for a truly pathetic man. A better match could not be made in heaven.

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