Russia not ‘abducting’ children but evacuating them from conflict zones
Vassily Nebenzia busts ICC and collective West’s lies
Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Sassily Nebenzia has disabused the world of the distorted misconception peddled by the West that Russia is ‘abducting’ Ukrainian children to Russia.
Speaking on April 5, 2023 at the Arria-formula meeting of the United Nations Security Council members on the topic, ‘Children and armed conflict: Ukrainian crisis. Evacuating children from conflict zone,” Nebenzia explained the evacuations within the historical context of the nine-yearold human suffering and ruined lives of the people of Donbas.
The war that was unleashed in 2014 by the Kiev authorities, who came to power after an anti-constitutional coup, has taken the hardest toll on the children of Donbas.
Over these years, hundreds of children have been killed and thousands injured there. The youngest victim of Ukrainian aggression was only 27 days old on the day of death.
The Alley of Angels, a monument in Donetsk commemorating all children who have been killed, has come to symbolise the sufferings and hardships of the children of Donbas in the recent nine years. Even by the modest estimates by OHCHR, which does not hold the data in its entirety, more than 3,000 civilians, including 152 children died in Donbass from 2014 to December 2021.
At present, this figure is growing rapidly, in no least measure due to the Western deliveries of long-range artillery to Ukraine, thanks to which the UAF can hit peaceful areas that used to be out of their reach.
Children die in artillery bombardments and from sniper shots, get blasted by the mines that Ukrainian forces planted back in 2014-2015 on forest paths and near water bodies.
They step onto “Lepestok” mines (that the UAF drop onto civilian quarters) which get them killed or severely injured.
For years, those crimes were (and continue to be) committed in plain sight of the global community, or rather the West, that through its indifference has been denying the people of Donbas a right to live for nine years now. These children fell victim to a fratricidal policy of Kiev and geopolitical ambitions of its sponsors. This tragedy could have been prevented if the Kiev regime had implemented the Minsk Agreements and stopped fighting against the Russia-speaking people of Donbas.
It would not have happened if Western states had supported the Minsk Process not just in words, but in deeds, rather than use it as a cover-up to rearm the Kiev regime for further aggression against Donbas. For all those years, Russia has been calling on the global community to pay attention to the lawlessness caused by the Kiev regime. Once every 12 months, on the anniversary of the signing of the Minsk Agreements, we took the floor in the UNSC chamber calling on Ukraine to implement the package. All in vain.
At the beginning of 2022, having received a carte blanche from the West, V. Zelensky, who had ascended to power with the slogans of unity and reconciliation with Donbas and who ought to have put an end to the criminal policy of P. Poroshenko, started his forceful “conquest” of the Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens. Cruel treatment by Kiev of its former subjects assumed an unprecedented scale.
In order to save people’s lives and protect children, the authorities of the LPR and DPR made a decision to evacuate peaceful citizens. Millions of civilians were evacuated from the conflict zone in Ukraine and the new Russian regions.
Among them were children, the overwhelming majority of whom arrived with their families, accompanied by their parents, guardians or caregivers. Only few, a smallest portion of them, came from facilities for orphans or children left without parental care.
The evacuation of children from the conflict zone was carried out in full compliance with obligations under the IHL, as well as Convention on the Rights of the Child.
However, killing people with impunity is not enough for Western arms dealers and their Kievan puppets. They think they can shift off the blame to others.
This is how they have come to accuse Russia of abductions and forceful deportation of children. Apparently, they are convinced that children, especially in orphanages, should have been left in the combat zone. This clearly shows what sort of “true humanists” our former Western partners actually are.
Ukrainian propaganda and Western media are creating this distorted picture with diligence and deliberation. They say it is a crime to save people in the territory that the UAF is bombing with the weapons supplied by the West. Thus, the topic of children in the conflict area was cynically used as another element of the anti-Russian information war.