Ukraine probing the deportation of children to Russia as plausible genocide.

Ukraine probing the deportation of children to Russia as plausible genocide.

 

Prosecutors investigating war crimes cases in Ukraine are looking into allegations of forcible deportation of children to Russia since the invasion, according to the country’s top prosecutor in an interview.

 

Forced mass deportation of civilians during a conflict is classified as a war crime under international humanitarian law. ‘Forcibly transferring children’ in particular qualifies as genocide, the most serious of war crimes, under the 1948 Genocide Convention, which prohibited the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group in whole or in part.

 

Since the invasion began on Feb. 24, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova has said that ‘we have more than 20 cases about forcible transfer of people’ to Russia from various regions across the eastern European country.

 

‘We started this case about genocide from the beginning of the war,’ Venediktova told Reuters. She claimed that, in the midst of the chaos and devastation caused by Russia’s assault, focusing on the removal of children was the best way to secure the evidence required to meet the strict legal definition of genocide: ‘That is why the forcible transfer of children is so critical to us.’

 

Venediktova refused to say how many victims had been forcibly transferred. However, Ukraine’s human rights ombudswoman, Lyudmyla Denisova, stated in mid-May that Russia had relocated more than 210,000 children during the conflict, as part of the more than 1.2 million Ukrainians deported against their will, according to Kyiv.

 

A Kremlin spokesman declined to comment on Venediktova’s remarks or the figures on Ukrainians on Russian soil. Russia has previously stated that it is providing humanitarian aid to those who wish to flee Ukraine voluntarily.