Siblings use a mobile phone light to read during a power blackout in Shostka in northeastern Ukraine close to the border with Russia.
This article is published in association with United Nations.
Scores of Ukrainian children are still missing after being deported far and wide across Russia and occupied territories while their families continue to search for them, human rights investigators said on Thursday.
Members of the Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, an independent probe into Russia’s full-scale invasion which presented its latest report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, said that they have verified the deportation and transfer of 1,205 children from Russian-occupied areas in Ukraine to Russia or to other occupied areas in Ukraine.
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“Based on new evidence, the Commission has now concluded that the Russian authorities committed two types of crimes against humanity: deportation and forcible transfer of children, as well as their enforced disappearance,” said the commission’s chair, Erik Møse.
8 in 10 kids not returned
Commissioner Pablo de Greiff told reporters that the Russian authorities had claimed that relocations were humanitarian evacuations for safety reasons, “but the Commission found that four years later, 80 per cent of the children from the documented cases have not been returned,” Mr. de Greiff said.
He stressed that this contravenes international humanitarian law, under which evacuations can only be temporary for compelling reasons of health, medical treatment or safety.
The Commission’s report says that many parents and legal guardians remain unaware of the children’s fate and whereabouts.
Instead of establishing mechanisms to facilitate their return, Russian authorities “arranged for the children’s long-term placement with families or institutions in 21 regions of the Russian Federation and in occupied areas of Ukraine”, Mr. de Greiff said, following a “carefully organized plan” and “pursuant to a policy conceived and executed under the leadership at the highest level of the Russian Federation state apparatus”.
In March 2023, the UN-backed International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin in connection with alleged war crimes concerning the deportation and “illegal transfer” of children from occupied Ukraine.
Asked about engagement with the Russian authorities on the matter, Mr. de Greiff stressed that the Commission had submitted to them “39 written requests for information about different issues, including the issue of children…and we have never received a reply”.
Neglected and hungry
He also highlighted evidence from some of the 20 per cent of children who returned, pointing to several types of mistreatment, including children not receiving sufficient medical care or food.
In one case, the family in which a teenager was placed was “willing to call the police… because this adolescent kid expressed the desire to return to Ukraine and to his family”.
Another case ended in the suicide of a young adolescent, he said.
Army desertions and false promises
Turning to the treatment of troops within the Russian armed forces, commissioner Vrinda Grover said that the investigators interviewed 85 soldiers who had deserted and that “most of them testified about extreme violence and coercion arbitrarily ordered or practised by the commanders against their own men.”
“Soldiers described being treated like cannon fodder,” Ms. Grover said. “They reported the practice to shoot soldiers, carry out mock executions, severe beatings, tying them to trees or [placing them] in pits.”
“Their testimonies speak of a total disregard for human life and dignity,” she concluded.
Mr. de Greiff added that the findings point to “treatment that took place with the knowledge, sometimes with the order and in fact sometimes with the participation of commanders” and not isolated incidents.
The probe also investigated the issue of foreign nationals recruited to fight with the Russian armed forces and found that recruits came from 17 countries around the globe.
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A man inspects the damage to an apartment building in Sloviansk, Ukraine.
Ms. Grover said that “many were deceived and lured from abroad to the Russian Federation” with the false promise of civilian jobs.
“They were coerced into signing contracts written in Russian language, which they did not understand, and then sent to the frontlines,” she said.
In its latest report, the Commission of Inquiry also documented rights violations among those mobilized for the Ukrainian armed forces, from irregular administrative detention to lack of access to legal representation, as well as instances of violence against conscientious objectors.
The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine was first established by the Human Rights Council in March 2022 to “investigate all alleged violations and abuses of human rights, violations of international humanitarian law and related crimes in the context of the aggression against Ukraine by the Russian Federation”, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour on 24 February that year. Commissioners are not UN staff, nor paid for their work.
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