New Delhi: Russia’s forced large-scale transfer and deportation of Ukrainian children to areas under its control is a ‘war crime’, according to a UN probe, news agency AFP reported.
In its first report, the high-level investigation team formed by the UN Human Rights Council a year back said that Russia had committed a vast array of violations since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“Many of these amount to war crimes,” the report by the UN team said, highlighting the forced transfer of children.
“The commission has concluded that the situations it has examined concerning the transfer and deportation of children, within Ukraine and to the Russian Federation respectively, violate international humanitarian law, and amount to a war crime,” the report added.
According to the Ukrainian government, as many as 16,221 children were deported to Russia as of last month. However, the UN investigators said they could not verify the figures but pointed out that the Russian officials had taken measures to place transferred Ukrainian children in institutions and foster homes and give them Russian citizenship.
The probe report also pointed to a decree signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin facilitating the granting of Russian citizenship to some categories of children.
