The Russian ambassador to the UN this Wednesday accused Portugal, Spain and Germany of taking “hundreds” of Ukrainian children from their mothers and placing them in reception centers on their territories, providing testimony in these alleged cases.
“My name is Alina Komisarenko, I am from the city of Zaporozhye. My son was taken away by the juvenile system in Portugal,” a woman said in a video presented by Russia at an informal Security Council meeting on “measures taken by the Russian authorities to remove children in danger.”
“I inform the Ukrainian press that I am not a fake, I am a citizen of Ukraine,” the woman added.
The credibility of the testimony presented by the Delegation of the Russian Federation to the UN cannot be verified.
Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya, whose country chairs the UN Security Council this month, accused Western countries of wanting to muffle the fact that children are being taken away from Ukrainian refugees in European countries.
The Ambassador then mentioned Portugal, Spain and Germany as examples of countries where this is happening.
“The number of people who have gone through this is in the hundreds. Small children are taken to the reception centers by strange people. Mothers who are trying to return their children are threatened with criminal prosecution,” the diplomat accused.
“We have to ask what will happen to children with Ukrainian passports in German and Spanish orphanages. But apparently that’s another matter. The problem has reached such proportions that mothers have lost hope and have used social media to contact us directly,” he said. said.
One of the women whose testimony was made public at the meeting was Yulia Panasenko, who accused Spain of hiding her son.
“My son was taken away by social services in Derio, Spain. I am telling the Ukrainian press that I am not a fake, I am a real person,” he said, showing a photo of his supposed passport.
Also, a woman identified as Olena Kovalena, who claims to be from the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, said that her son Richard Kovalev was “taken away nine months ago by strangers” and that he is now with a German family.
“I tell this story to everyone, everywhere. I already had four hearings, but they don’t give me my son, who is in German custody, in some German family, as I was told. three times an hour. My boy will soon forget that he has a mother. This is alienation. Please save my Ukrainian son. It’s not “fake”. I beg you,” he said.
Other women claimed in the video that their children were taken to European countries.
The Russian ambassador “seized the opportunity” to appeal to the civil society of European countries, “to those for whom human rights and children’s rights are not just an element of propaganda against Russia, but a system of values.”
“If you can help these Ukrainian mothers, please contact us and we will put you in touch with them directly. Our address is on the Internet,” the Russian ambassador said.
“As regards the criminal regime [Volodymyr] Zelensky (President of Ukraine) and the European governments that stand behind Zelensky, neither we nor our mothers have much hope for them in the territory controlled by the Kiev regime,” he added.
On March 17, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin on war crimes charges for his alleged involvement in child abductions in Ukraine.
In its statement, the ICC accuses Putin of being “allegedly responsible for the war crime of illegal deportation of the population (children) and illegal transfer of the population (children) from the occupied territories of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”
Thousands of Ukrainian children are at stake, placed in children’s institutions, who were forcibly transported to Russia or to Ukrainian territories occupied by Russian troops.
A report on Russia’s Systematic Re-Education and Adoption Program for Children from Ukraine, published in February by the Humanities Research Laboratory at the Yale School of Public Health (HRL), says more than 6,000 Ukrainian minors are placed in 43 residential institutions. education or Russian orphanages after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The report acknowledges that the number could have been much higher.
The non-governmental organization (NGO) Human Rights Watch (HRW) claims in another report that thousands of Ukrainian children living in orphanages have been forcibly transported to Russia or the occupied territories.
Until the end of February last year, 16,221 children were deported to Russia, according to Ukrainian authorities, and the UN Human Rights Commission was unable to confirm this figure.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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