Kyiv accuses Russia of illegally giving more than 1,000 Ukrainian children up for adoption
"More than 1,000 children from Mariupol were illegally given to foreigners in Tyumen, Irkutsk, Kemerovo and in the Altai district" in Siberia, says the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.
Ukraine accused Moscow on Tuesday, August 23 of organizing massive illegal adoptions of Ukrainian children transferred from occupied areas to Russia. "Russia continues to kidnap children from Ukrainian territory and arrange for their illegal adoption by Russian citizens," the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
"More than 1,000 children from Mariupol" , a port city in south-eastern Ukraine that fell into the hands of the Russian army, "were illegally given to foreigners in Tyumen, Irkutsk, Kemerovo and in the district of 'Altai' , in Siberia, the ministry said, citing information released by authorities in Krasnodar, a city in southwestern Russia not far from Ukraine.
More than 300 Ukrainian children are also kept in "special establishments" in the Krasnodar region, he said.
"Deportations"
These actions by Russia constitute a "serious violation of the Geneva Convention" on the protection of civilians during war and the UN convention on the rights of children, the ministry charged. “All Ukrainian children illegally transferred to Russian territory must be returned to their parents or legal guardians ,” he stressed.
Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, Kyiv has accused Moscow of forcing Ukrainians, including children, from areas occupied by Russian troops to go to Russia rather than to other parts of Ukraine, a policy compared to “deportations” by the Ukrainian authorities.
Several families from Mariupol told AFP that they had been forced to go to Russia against their will to flee the fighting. This strategic port on the Sea of ??Azov, which had half a million inhabitants before the war, was attacked by the Russian army in the first hours of its offensive.
After weeks of Russian siege and shelling , resulting in the death of at least 20,000 of its inhabitants, according to Kiev estimates, Mariupol came entirely under the control of troops from Moscow.
.