Roughly 400 Ukrainian children from Russian-occupied parts of the Zaporizhzhia region are to be sent to Russia before the end of the year for what has been described as a compulsory “interregional exchange” initiative, the Center for National Resistance said on Nov. 27.
The CNR said that the Russian program had scheduled trips to local museums, sporting activities and walks along the Volga, but warned that “behind the facade of tourist rhetoric, another meaning is hidden – the systematic and controlled movement of Ukrainian children deep into the territory of the Russian Federation.”
It noted that “such trips take place in conditions of a complete lack of transparency and control mechanisms,” adding that “parents have no opportunity to influence the organization of such exchanges, international humanitarian structures do not receive access, and the Russian side persistently presents everything as tourist programs, without explaining the legal grounds for the movement of minors to the aggressor country.”
Such exchanges are simply “another element of the policy of integrating the occupied territories into the Russian space,” the CNR continued.
“Under the guise of trips, children are separated from their family environment, creating conditions for ideological influence and gradually getting used to Russian institutions.”
Parents whose children are sent on the trips risk “prolonged isolation and loss of control over the fate of their own children,” per the Center.
Moscow has previously been accused of unlawfully abducting Ukrainian children from occupied regions to Russia – actions deemed breaches of international law.
The abductions were cited by the International Criminal Court (ICC) when it issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova.
Lvova-Belova boasted in October about abducting a teenaged boy from the occupied city of Mariupol and taking him to Russia.
She said that 15-year-old Pylyp “did not want to go to Russia,” and that loved Ukraine, visited pro-Ukrainian websites and would sing songs in Ukrainian in order to aggravate her.
Earlier this month, it was reported that the Yale lab responsible for identifying and tracking the tens of thousands of Ukrainian children deported to Russia was mere weeks away from a total shutdown.
Executive Director Nathaniel Raymond told Kyiv Post on Nov. 4 that the lab’s funding lifeline had been severed despite bipartisan support in Congress and high-profile expressions of interest from the White House.