Human rights defender says over 50,000 children deported from Ukraine by Russia

Over 50,000 children have been forcibly deported from Ukraine.

The relevant statement was made by Institute of Strategic Research and Security Director, human rights defender and lawyer Pavlo Lysianskyi when presenting an analytical report on the forcible deportation of children from the temporarily occupied areas to Russia, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

“According to our estimates, over 50,000 children have been forcibly deported now. Our data are different [compared to other estimates – Ed.], because we tried to consider the number of families, where the occupiers deprived people of their parental rights,” Lysianskyi told.

In his words, international missions usually counted only orphans and other cases of deportation, but none of them considered the fact that Russian invaders began to deprive people of their parental rights, and the so-called ‘occupation commissions’ supervising the compliance with the rights of minor children intensified their activities.

Lysianskyi has been monitoring the situation in the temporarily occupied territories over the past eight years and, in his words, such ‘commissions’ have never worked there before.

“And here, they appeared after Russia’s [full-scale – Ed.] armed aggression started, imposing fines, taking children away, preparing documents, etc. All of this started approximately in April 2022,” Lysianskyi noted.

A reminder that, according to the Ombudsman’s Office, a total of 13,112 children are now considered as deported from Ukraine. 

mk