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Ukrainian children from a Donetsk children's home in a Russian camp in Rostov

Photograph:

AP

Since the beginning of the war of aggression on Ukraine, Russia says it has "taken in" more than 700,000 Ukrainian children. This is stated in a report by the Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights, which was published on Sunday and reported by the "Moscow Times".

"Since February 2022, the Russian Federation has taken in about 4.8 million residents of Ukraine and the Donbass republics (Donetsk and Luhansk), including more than 700,000 children," it said. In the context of events, the Kremlin does not speak of deportations, but of evacuations.

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An "overwhelming majority" of the 700,000 Ukrainian children came to Russia with their parents or relatives, said the children's rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, according to the media report. She did not give further details.

Their report lists 1,500 orphans who have been "evacuated" to Russia from the separatist eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. According to the report, 380 of them have now been adopted by Russian parents.

Deportation of children is a war crime

At the beginning of July, Grigory Karasin, chairman of the international committee of the Russian Federation Council and former deputy foreign minister, said that Russia had so far brought around 700,000 children from Ukraine to Russian territory.

A UN-backed investigation had found that Russia's forced transfer and deportation of Ukrainian children to Russian-controlled territories constituted a war crime.

The Kremlin has rejected the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin as legally "null and void" because Russia does not recognize the jurisdiction of the court in The Hague.

According to Kyiv, around 19,500 Ukrainian children have been deported to Russia since the invasion, with many of them reportedly placed in homes and foster families. Of the kidnapped boys and girls, Kiev has so far been able to bring back only 328, according to its own statements.

According to the Ukrainian government's "Children of War" database, another 15,500 children were found and 386 were returned by Russia.

In the past, children have repeatedly become a weapon in wars. Partly to demoralize the people, to use children as soldiers, but also simply to rob the affected countries of their future.

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