Source: Reuters
“Russian presidential aircraft and funds were used in a program that took children from occupied Ukrainian territories, stripped them of Ukrainian identity and placed them with Russian families, according to a report by Yale’s School of Public Health. The U.S. State Department-backed research, published on Tuesday, identified 314 Ukrainian children taken to Russia in the early months of the war in Ukraine as part of what it says was a systematic, Kremlin-funded program to ‘Russify’ them. Reuters was unable to confirm the report’s findings independently. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his child rights’ commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, for the alleged war crime of deportation of Ukrainian children. At the time, Lvova-Belova said her commission acted on humanitarian grounds to protect children in an area of military hostilities.” (12/03/24)