The President of the Association of Ukrainians in Portugal, Pavlo Sadokha, today called “pure propaganda” the statement of the Russian Ambassador to the UN, who accused Portugal of taking away Ukrainian children from their mothers.
Pavel Sadokha, in response to Luse, stated that Vasily Nebenzya is a “propaganda ambassador” who “always made propagandistic statements that do not correspond to reality.”
Sadokha added that Russian propaganda “began to record videos with Ukrainian refugees, but manipulate cases, showing that the children of refugees from Ukraine are defenseless in the EU countries.”
The Russian ambassador to the UN today accused Portugal, Spain and Germany of taking hundreds of Ukrainian children from their mothers and placing them in reception centers in their countries, presenting video testimonies of the alleged cases at an informal SBU meeting. Council, which Russia is chairing this month, to review “the measures taken by the Russian authorities to remove endangered children.”
One such video features a woman who identifies herself as Alina Komisarenko, a native of the Ukrainian city of Zaporozhye, who claims her son was “taken away by the youth system in Portugal.”
The President of the Association of Ukrainians in Portugal told Luza that “it’s the right thing”, “the child was seized” from the mother by the commission for the protection of minors, but “not without reason.”
“The child was not stolen,” Pavel Sadokha emphasized, adding that the commission “should have reacted” to the case “in the same way as it would have reacted if the child, under identical circumstances, was of a different nationality,” either Ukrainian or Russian. ..”.
Without specifying the reasons that led to the removal of the child from the mother, saying that the case is being investigated, Sadokha noted that the association is “trying to help” the woman, who is “in an emotionally difficult state, with her husband.” in Ukraine”.
Pavel Sadokha also stressed that the Portuguese state “pays special attention to refugee children from Ukraine.”
Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya accused Western countries of wanting to hide the fact that European countries, citing Portugal, Spain and Germany as an example, are taking children from Ukrainian refugees.
Vasily Nebenzya claimed that “small children are taken away to foster care by outsiders” and that “mothers trying to return their children are threatened with criminal prosecution.”
The Portuguese government has already refuted the diplomat’s statements, confirming in a note sent to the Foreign Ministry Luce “its support for Ukraine in various dimensions, including the reception of displaced Ukrainians who suffered from Russian aggression against their country.”
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 illegally deporting the population.” [crianças] and illegal population transfer [crianças] 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 Systemic Reeducation and Adoption Program for Children from Ukraine, released in February by the Humanities Research Laboratory at the Yale School of Public Health in the United States, estimated that more than 6,000 Ukrainian minors are placed in 43 camps. , Russian re-education or 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 Human Rights Watch, in another report, indicates that thousands of Ukrainian children living in orphanages were forcibly transported to Russia or to 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
I am Michael Melvin, an experienced news writer with a passion for uncovering stories and bringing them to the public. I have been working in the news industry for over five years now, and my work has been published on multiple websites. As an author at 24 News Reporters, I cover world section of current events stories that are both informative and captivating to read.