The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) writes this in a report.Russia called it a part of propaganda to malign Russia and to pave way for NATO. While NATO expansion is not acceptable to even China.
“It seems that there is a plan to assimilate them en masse,” Veronika Bilkova, a professor at Prague’s law school who co-authored the study with two other experts, told the press on Thursday.
It is difficult to determine exactly how many children were deported, because that policy already started in 2015, after the annexations of Crimea, she stressed. “According to the lowest estimates we could find, the number is around 20,000. But Russian and Ukrainian sources suggest figures ten times higher or even more,” Bilkova said. “So this is really a huge phenomenon.”
The 82-page report cites frequent violations of children’s rights with a systematic pattern of integration into Russian families instead of help finding relatives. Such a practice “could constitute a crime against humanity,” the report concludes.
Russia claims to protect “refugee” children, but according to the document’s authors, it has taken “legal and political measures (…) to promote the acquisition of Russian citizenship and their placement in foster care”.
The transferred young Ukrainians are also “exposed to a pro-Russian information campaign aimed at re-educating them. They are also subjected to military training.”
The report is based on written sources, about twenty interviews and a visit to Kiev in April. Russia has refused to cooperate.
In March, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin for the war crime of illegal deportation of children.
According to official figures, the Ukrainian authorities have so far recovered only 360 children, while the number of victims is estimated at more than 19,000.
The 57-member OSCE was established in 1975 at the height of the Cold War to promote relations between the East and the West, but its functioning has been complicated in recent months by Moscow blocking several key decisions.