Number of Ukrainian children illegally taken to russia may amount to 150,000 – ombudsman

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Ukrainian children

About 150,000 illegally deported Ukrainian children may be on the territory of russia. Dmytro Lubinets, the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights, was cited as saying by ukrinform.ua.

“As of yesterday, there are 16,207 officially verified children in the territory of the russian Federation. These are children that I, as an ombudsman, know about, which Ukrainian city these children are from and approximately where they are in the territory of the russian Federation. In reality, this number of children is much higher.

We assume that this number reaches approximately 150,000 children. russia says that there are 733,000 Ukrainian children they keep on their territory. However, in our opinion, this figure is exaggerated,” said Lubinets.

According to him, most children were taken to russia from those regions that were temporarily occupied, namely Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Crimea. Other violations were recorded too.

Ukraine is now seeking to legally recognize the deportation of Ukrainian children during the war as genocide, Lubinets said.

“Why do we talk about genocide? Because according to international law, one of its characteristics is forced displacement from one ethnic group to another. They take Ukrainian children who speak Ukrainian, move them to the territory of the russian Federation and say that they were never Ukrainian. They forbid to use the Ukrainian language, do not issue documents, do not release children,” Lubinets noted.

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