Mr. LVOVA-BELOVA DENY ANY “DEPORTATION” OF UKRAINIAN CHILDREN
kyiv has been accusing Moscow for several weeks of having “deported” Ukrainian children, the number of which it estimates at least 20,000. In March, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over the matter, and the Hague-based tribunal did the same for Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova. childhood Russian.
Charges that the latter rejected during an interview Monday with the American media VICE News, claiming to have nothing to hide. “It’s funny. I’m a mother. It says it all. A war criminal? What are you talking about?” she asked. She did, however, acknowledge that several thousand children were taken to Russia in what were supposed to be summer camps. “When parents were offered to send them on vacation for free, of course, everyone immediately accepted with joy. (…) These are children and parents who expressed the desire to become a great Russia” , she insisted, however.
She also admitted that 380 children from Russian-occupied regions are now taken in by Russian families, and she herself said she took in a 16-year-old boy, Philip, from Mariupol, but without “an ounce of politics”. “I can therefore say with certainty that I am not ashamed of any of my actions because all this is done for children and for the good of children”, hammered the Russian commissioner for children.