The Russian Federation took 1,000 children from the Kherson region to Kabardino-Balkaria for “rehabilitation”

The Russian military took another thousand children from the left bank of the Kherson region to the territory of the Russian Federation under the pretext of “rehabilitation”. Dmytro Lubinets, the representative of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on human rights, informed about this on July 27.

“The Russians took 1,000 children from the temporarily occupied territories of the Kherson region to Kabardino-Balkaria for ‘rehabilitation,'” the ombudsman wrote. home to get acquainted with the “beauty” of the Russian region, which took over the Kherson region.

As Lubinets noted, most of these children have parents who probably give permission to take the child out.

“However, the extent to which such a choice is free in the conditions of occupation remains an open question. Children are forced to adopt not only the culture and traditions of the Russian state. There, a powerful resource is involved to destroy their Ukrainian identity, which in turn is a component of the genocidal policy of the Russian Federation,” the ombudsman emphasized.

According to him, such actions grossly violate the rights of children and international standards of human rights protection.

“Ukraine continues to insist on the need to obtain access for international organizations to the temporarily occupied territories and bring those responsible for violating the rights of Ukrainian children to justice,” Lubinets emphasized.

According to the state portal Children of War, more than 19,500 children were deported from Ukraine, the exact number cannot be established at the moment. Only 388 children were returned. The Russian authorities announced the deportation of more than 700,000 children.

The children’s ombudsman of Ukraine, Darya Gerasimchuk, said that since part of the territory of Ukraine is currently under occupation and the authorities do not have access to it, it may be about several hundred thousand kidnapped children.

In April 2023, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution calling the deportation of Ukrainian children genocide.

In March, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova. They are suspected of illegally deporting children from the occupied regions of Ukraine to Russia.

In May, Lubinets said that Ukraine has evidence that the Belarusian authorities are also involved in the deportation of Ukrainian children.

The American Institute for the Study of War reported at the end of May that Russia plans to take thousands of Ukrainian children out of the occupied territories in the summer.