Crimes against children were the focus of the third and final day of the United for Justice international conference, where prosecutors and justice officials discussed creating mechanisms to prosecute Russian crimes in Ukraine.
Ukrainian Deputy Prosecutor General Viktoria Litvinova revealed that there are more than 2,500 ongoing investigations related to war crimes committed against children by Russian forces.
At least 462 children have been killed, 931 injured and 13 victims of sexual violence since the start of the invasion, Litvinova said, warning however that the true scale of these crimes is still unknown.
According to Litvinova, the Russian forces also deported some 16,000 Ukrainian minors to Russia or to territories controlled by Moscow and explained that securing their return is very complicated and that only 307 of them have returned to Ukraine so far. .
According to journalist Oksana Kovalenko, from the Ukrainian media “Babel”, a video was shown at one of the round tables in which one of them, Sasha, 12 years old and from the coastal city of Mariupol, told about her history.
Sasha was separated from his mother, Snezhana, during the so-called “filtration” process that all residents of the city taken by the Russians had to undergo to determine their ideological position.
Sasha was told that “his mother no longer wanted to take care of him” and was transported to the Donetsk region under Russian control. After a month, he managed to contact his grandmother by telephone, in territory under Ukrainian control, and finally to return, although he still does not know what happened to his mother.
Adviser to the President of Ukraine on Children’s Rights Issues, Darya Gerasymchuk, explained that the Russians use five scenarios to deport Ukrainian children.
So, in addition to separating minors from their parents during screening processes, they take advantage of the occasion when parents die or lose custody. They also take children who were already in orphanages or create “unbearable conditions” to force families to consent to their children being transferred to “summer camps” in Russia where they will be safe.
Gerasymchuk stressed that the actions of the Russian authorities in this regard are not arbitrary.
“The Russians do everything possible to prevent children from being reunited with their families. They immediately take away their phones and do not allow them to report their whereabouts. This makes it very difficult to find these children,” a- he declared.
“Our goal now is to end the forced displacement and deportation of children. For that, we need international help,” he concluded.