“France supports the Court, just as it helps the Ukrainian judiciary by sending specialized teams to the scene to document the abuses or identify the victims,” said Catherine Colonna.
According to the Ukrainian government, 16,226 children were deported, 10,513 located and 308 returned. Among the children and adolescents sent to Russia, more than 2,000 children are orphaned or separated from their parents.
Systematic operations
The arrest warrant issued by ICC judges two days ago targets Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, his children’s rights commissioner, for directly overseeing the abduction of Ukrainian children for “adoption” and ” re-education”.
International magistrates describe systematized operations for the transfer of children and adolescents to Russia: “travel aboard military aircraft, raids in schools and orphanages, forgery of documents…” A few weeks after the invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin signed the decree that provides for simplified procedures to urgently recognize Russian citizenship for minors torn from their families.
The government mediator for kidnapped children, Daria Gerasimchuk, interviewed by “The Guardian,” explains that the children “are taken to Crimea or occupied Russia, sometimes moving from camp to camp. We believe that some of them are not in camps at all, but in mental institutions.” She describes situations where Russian soldiers “kill the parents for whatever reason and kidnap the child. In other cases, they simply snatch the child directly from the family, perhaps to punish that family. »
Spoils of war
Judges in The Hague collected evidence for about 600 cases and pointed out in the arrest warrant that only one in a hundred minors managed to return home.