After the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin in March, Russian officials now claim that children who were removed from Ukraine and placed in facilities in Russia were taken for their own safety. On Wednesday, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights told a meeting at the United Nations that authorities are already coordinating with international groups to help reconnect children with their families.
Russia, which currently holds the presidency of the U.N. Security Council – a rotating presidency that changes each month – called a meeting with ambassadors from other nations to address so-called “disinformation” about the alleged abduction of Ukrainian children. Western ambassadors boycotted the meeting, sending lower-level diplomats to attend instead. However, once the meeting was addressed via video link, several diplomats – including those from the United States and United Kingdom – walked out of the meeting.
Maria Lvova-Belova, the Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights, told Security Council officials who remained in the meeting that Russia’s decision to move the children over the border was an “emergency” decision made to “move these children from under shelling and move them to safe areas.”
Lvova-Belova herself is a subject of arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court.
Speaking to reporters before the meeting, United States Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield revealed that both the U.K. and the U.S. had successfully pushed to block the meeting from being broadcast publicly, stating that the Russian commissioner should not be given an “international podium to spread disinformation.”
49 States Condemn Russian Claims
Ahead of the meeting, 49 states condemned Russia’s efforts to paint its actions as anything other than a criminal act. In a statement on behalf of the nations, which included the United Kingdom, United States, Switzerland, Japan, and several other major world powers, Russian authorities were accused of preparing to “further abuse the powers and privileges” of being a Permanent Member of the U.N. Security Council to “spread disinformation about its widespread abduction and unlawful forced deportation of thousands of Ukrainian children.”
In the statement, the Russian Federation was accused of interrogating, detaining, and forcibly deporting more than 19,500 Ukrainian children, citing data collected by the government of Ukraine. The statement also recognized that Russia’s decision to move Ukrainian children to holding facilities and later deport them to Russia was deemed to have violated international humanitarian law by the Independent International Commission.
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.
