"We have to say goodbye to deported children who have been adopted by Russians". Interview with human rights activist

Even before the outbreak of the full-scale war, Russia began deporting Ukrainian children from the self-proclaimed “L/DPR” to its territory. Since February 24, the scale of deportations has increased: the occupiers have been deporting entire boarding schools.

On October 25, lawyers of the Regional Center for Human Rights filed a report to the International Criminal Court on the crime that has all the elements of genocide.

Will it be possible to establish who exactly was taken by the Russians, how many children have already been illegally adopted, and why the Russian children's ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova is as much a criminal as Putin? Hromadske talked about this with human rights activist, lawyer of the Center Kateryna Rashevska.

How many children could Russia deport to its territory?

I am not for saying that Russia deported about 700 thousand children. Officially, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation gives information about more than 300 thousand deportees. This number was also voiced by the representative of the United Kingdom in the UN Security Council. Later it was repeated in the US State Department, where they talked about 260 thousand.

The crime does not become less shameful and horrible from the fact that Russia probably deported not 700 but 300 thousand of our children. The mass criterion is still met.

Can we really call children, whom their parents sent to summer camps, deported? When we worked in the de-occupied towns and villages of Kharkiv Oblast, local authorities there said that it was a voluntary decision of the parents of their community and that it should not be called deportation.

From a legal point of view, we will really have a lot of questions, because the parents signed special documents and gave the children their original birth certificates with them to Russia.

At the same time, it is necessary to take into account the circumstances under which they did it. Russia created such conditions under which parents could not behave differently. When a city or a village is shelled incessantly, children are constantly sitting in basements, according to the practice of both tribunals and the International Criminal Court, it can be assumed that it all happened under duress. Although it is true that no one came with a knife and snatched children from their parents.

I talked to the mother of a boy who was taken to Russia for a vacation. She told me that she went with three women to pick up their children. One of them stayed in Russia because they were threatened. That it would be even messier than before, an open conflict. If you do not want to stay here, in Russia, with your child, then leave him.

This woman was afraid to give the contact of the mother, who went with her to Russia. She also refused to talk to journalists at my request. She said that she was afraid that she would be persecuted by the Right Sector. This is all the result of propaganda.

This mother was very careful in answering my questions about what the children were doing in the camp. Only from some of her words, it was possible to conclude that their phones were taken away and that they were under the protection of the Ministry of Defense. In the morning the children listened to the Russian anthem, and they also had music lessons where they learned it. They went on an excursion to the Kremlin.

We have the testimony of a girl who said that they were convinced that the Ukrainian military would come and kill everyone. Or that they were raping children.

We also know that many children during their stay in the camp communicated with representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church.

How does Ukraine identify deported children?

In Ukraine, before the full-scale war, there was no unified register of orphans. Russia has one, and we have 125 local registers. Since May they are trying to unite them into one. But you understand that these registers could be written on paper and saved as a document only on one computer. And if this settlement was under occupation?

Under international law, Russia must provide information about deported children to the International Committee of the Red Cross. And the latter, accordingly, must pass it on to us. Russia does not do this. And even if we imagine that Ukraine has a national register of orphans, until Russia confirms who exactly it has deported, we cannot say the exact number of children. After all, we know stories of how employees of boarding schools took children to their families so that Russians would not take them away.

So far, the Ukrainian authorities have managed to identify only 13 thousand children, this figure is available on the website “Children of War”.

Since then, Ukraine has managed to return 125 children (as of December 23 — ed.). These are the ones who were searched for by relatives who caused a big media scandal.

Where might the Ukrainian children be and does any international organization have access to them to check the conditions where they are being held?

We know from open sources that Ukrainian children were taken to at least 57 regions of Russia. In particular, to remote ones, to Sakhalin. We also have a fragment of an interview with a girl who is in Dagestan.

In cases when children are deported together with their parents, Russians try to avoid the accumulation of Ukrainians in one territory. Therefore, they are dispersed everywhere to integrate them into the community.

Russia does not allow anyone to visit these children. It violates all the norms of Protocol Additional I to the Geneva Convention. It does not provide any information about the children and where they are kept to the International Committee of the Red Cross or UNICEF.

What do you know about the adoption of Ukrainian children by Russian families? How many of them could have already been adopted?

We can say that the Russians took in 400 children, including Filip, who ended up in the Lvova-Belova family. But even if they had given at least one child for adoption, it would still be a crime.

Recently, representatives of the UN monitoring mission asked me if I had court decisions on the adoption of Ukrainian children by Russians. Due to the secrecy of adoption, such documents are not available in the public domain, in Ukraine as well.

However, there is a practice of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, which concerns the article on the transfer for adoption. It clearly states: in most cases, parents changed not only the child's name but also other personal information. Therefore, it will be impossible to identify Ukrainian children after they have been transferred to Russian families. And when we talk about these 400 Ukrainian children who are already in families, we have to say goodbye to them. Yes, maybe we will be able to return them after the end of the war.

When I talk to representatives of embassies about the videos published (by Russians — ed.) with our children, their new parents, or guardians, they say that it is all staged and not true. At the same time, I found a mother who adopted Ukrainian children. She posted a photo with them on her Odnoklassniki page. The woman's name is Liliana, she has worked in the Ministry of Internal Affairs all her life, and she is an honored pensioner. She has many awards because 50 children have passed through her hands. It's like a business. Yes, these videos have a propaganda meaning, but the case is real: the children are now in the family. The main thing for us is that there was a forced transfer.

We know that there are two boys in the Moscow region who have a grandmother in Ukraine. If they get used to being with their Russian parents, no matter how terrible it sounds, they will become like family. I don't know if it would be in their best interest to take these children and return them back to Ukraine.

Russians are committing genocide through their actions. Regardless of whether they adopt children, take them under guardianship or temporary care.

What should Ukraine and the international community do to return the children as soon as possible?

It is necessary to avoid any under-the-carpet democracy. All agreements should be made openly whenever possible. For a Ukrainian politician to enter the arena and say: “I sent a request to Lvova-Belova, and she said: "We will not return the children".” So that the whole international community could hear this.

Also, we should explain in more detail at what stage the process of identification of children is, so that those who can help, can join the development of a mechanism for their return.

There must be a clear identification of the circle of guilty people, and their hierarchy, so that they are already included in the sanctions lists. There should be a mechanism to check the effectiveness of sanctions. For example, sanctions do not apply to Lvova-Belova. It would be effective to open proceedings against Lvova-Belova at the national and international levels.

In October, our Ministry of Foreign Affairs asked the prosecutor's office to open proceedings against her. So far, there is no news about the opening of proceedings and no confirmation in the public domain. So, this person is not a criminal. We are talking about genocide, beating our chests, and there is not even a proceeding against her at the national level. And when the International Criminal Court is silent and does not make any statements regarding the deportation of Ukrainian children, Lvova-Belova perceives this as tolerating what is happening.

So far, it is difficult for me to imagine any legal mechanism under which Ukraine and Russia would sign a joint agreement that Russia would provide a list of children, and we would check them all and return them. No, they will not do that. Their goal is to use children as a weapon, as a bargaining position. Ukraine will never be able to say that we do not need these children, a civilized state cannot do that.