Russia has relocated thousands of Ukrainian children — at least 6,000 — to areas under its control in Ukraine as well as on its own territory, according to a report Tuesday by the Conflict Observatory, an independent research group funded by the US State Department.
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“The fact that these are transfers and forced relocations of children is in no way conceivable,” affirms the Conflict Observatory in this report, authored by the Yale University Humanitarian Research Laboratory in the US.
He called on the Russian authorities to “stop these resettlements immediately” and “return the children to their families”.
It was a “clear violation” of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Civilians in Time of War, said one of the researchers, Nathaniel Raymond.
These activities “could, in some cases, constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity,” he told reporters.
The observatory, citing satellite imagery or eyewitness testimony, continues to urge Moscow to provide registers of these transferred children and to allow “independent monitor access”.
It identifies 43 facilities where Ukrainian children have been relocated, sometimes thousands of miles from their homes.
The report, which emphasizes that this policy has been endorsed at the highest level of the Russian government, condemns the “systematic efforts to prevent children from returning to Ukraine and their relatives from contact and to ‘re-educate’ them.” . so that they become pro-Russian”.
These children are also offered for adoption in Russia.
Ukraine also accuses Russian forces of kidnapping thousands of children, including orphans, and taking them to Moscow-controlled areas.
This observatory had previously denounced the forced resettlement of Ukrainians in the Russian-controlled eastern areas of the country and the atrocities committed by Russian forces since the invasion began on February 24.