8,600 Ukrainian Children Were Forcibly Deported To Russia: Ombudsman

Russia has forcibly deported nearly 9,000 children from Ukraine, Ukrainian officials alleged.

More than 12,000 Ukrainian children are now in Russian territory, 8,600 of whom were taken by force, Dmytro Lubinets, the human rights ombudsman of Ukraine's parliament Verkhovna Rada, claimed during a media briefing hosted by Media Center Ukraine.

Lubinets, law enforcement agencies and the office of Ukraine's Prosecutor General are aware of where the children were deported from and where they are now in Russia, the official said.

They also supposedly know the actions Russian authorities have carried out against the children.

"We open criminal proceedings for each case. I can only talk about verified and confirmed figures," Lubinets said.

Russian and Russian-controlled forces forcibly transferred Ukrainian civilians from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia or Russian-controlled territory, Amnesty International said in a report published last month.

Civilians were forced through abusive screening processes known as "filtration," which sometimes resulted in arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment, the human rights organization found.

Children were allegedly separated from their families during the deportations.

"Separating children from their families and forcing people hundreds of kilometers from their homes are further proof of the severe suffering Russia's invasion has inflicted on Ukraine's civilians," Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International's secretary general, was quoted as saying in a statement.

Russia's forcible transfer and deportation of civilians from Ukraine amounted to war crimes and likely crimes against humanity, Amnesty International said.

Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, "[f]orcibly transferring children of the group to another group" constitutes genocide when "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."

Meanwhile, civilians cannot be compelled to leave their own territory during conflicts for reasons connected with the conflict under the Geneva Conventions.

Amnesty International called on Russia to allow those who were forcibly transferred and unlawfully detained to be allowed to leave.

Those responsible for carrying out these actions must also be held accountable, according to the organization.

Children have been transferred to Russia over the course of the invasion of Ukraine to be adopted and become citizens, The New York Times reported.

Russian law prohibits the adoption of foreign children, but Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree in May that made it easier for Russia to adopt and give citizenship to Ukrainian children without parental care.

The decree also makes it harder for Ukraine and the children's surviving relatives to win them back, the Associated Press reported.

"Russia is doing everything to prevent our children from returning to us," Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin previously said.