The “International Criminal Court” (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Putin and Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova in early 2023 on the grounds that they’re responsible for Russia’s alleged “abduction” of Ukrainian children from the regions that voted to join Russia in September 2022. The reality though, as Russia has consistently maintained, is that these children were taken under government care per global norms as a result of them being displaced or orphaned by the conflict.
Moreover, Qatar contributed to reuniting some of these children under Russia’s care with their Ukrainian relatives on several occasions, thus discrediting the basis upon which the ICC issued warrants for Putin’s and Lvova-Belova’s arrests. While neither of them cares about what that partially recognized and scandalous body claims, especially since they don’t plan to travel to any of the countries that would act on their warrants, the issue has once again become central to the conflict after the latest Istanbul talks.
Head of the Russian delegation Vladimir Medinsky confirmed that the Ukrainian side handed over a list of 339 children’s names during the second round of their newly resumed bilateral negotiations that he in turn passed along to Lvova-Belova. She met with Putin earlier that same day on officially unrelated business, but the timing suggests that Russia expected to receive such a list and is prioritizing it. She later told reporters how the number of allegedly “abducted” Ukrainian children dropped from 900,000 to 339.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also spoke on this issue during last week’s inaugural Global Digital Forum, declaring that “There are no Ukrainian children abducted by Russia, as they put it. You just need to know this and that should be the starting point when discussing this problem.” That’s a self-respecting approach since it would be an implicit admission of false guilt for Russia to accept Ukraine’s bogus premise that it “abducted” children as the starting point of discussions.
Zakharova continued by explaining that “There are children of different nationalities, different citizenships. Moreover, many of them may not have any papers at all or may be victims of people who falsify documents, and they are wanted by relatives, parents, and other next of kin. There are certain procedures in this work.” She also blamed Ukraine’s “Lack of clear data, lack of transparency, transparency in work, endless manipulation” for why the issue hasn’t yet been resolved.
Most importantly, however, she claimed that “a huge number of children have indeed disappeared, those with Ukrainian citizenship or Ukrainian parents, but only on the territory of the European Union.” This deserves to be investigated, but it’s unlikely that the EU or top NGOs will seriously do so since there’s more political capital to be gained in lending false credence to the claim that Russia “abducted” Ukrainian children, which is discredited by its efforts to return those under its care to their relatives.
Reflecting on the insight that was shared on this issue, it appears to be the case that Ukraine is “put[ting] on a show for bleeding-heart European old ladies with no children of their own” exactly as Medinsky was reported to have told the Ukrainian delegation when receiving their list. It’s always tragic whenever children are displaced or orphaned by conflict, but evacuating them from the front lines and giving them proper care isn’t akin to “abducting” them, let alone when they’re later returned to their relatives.
