US report denounces Russian policy of relocating thousands of Ukrainian children

BET À DAY

Russia has relocated thousands of Ukrainian children – at least 6,000 – to areas under its control in Ukraine as well as to its own territory, a report by the Conflict Observatory, an independent research group, warns on Tuesday. funded by the US State Department.

“The fact that these are involuntary transfers and removals of children is inconceivable by any measure,” says the Conflict Observatory in this report written by the Humanitarian Research Laboratory of Yale University in the United States.

It calls on the Russian authorities to “immediately stop” these relocations and “bring the children back to their families”.

This is a “clear violation” of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the treatment civilians in wartime, said one of the researchers, Nathaniel Raymond.

These activities “could in some cases constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity,” he claimed to journalists.

The Observatory, which cites satellite images or testimonies, still calls on Moscow to provide registers of these transferred children and to allow “access to independent observers”.

It identifies 43 establishments where they have been relocated Ukrainian children, sometimes thousands of miles from home.

The report, which highlights that this policy has been endorsed at the highest level of the Russian government, denounces “the systematic effort to prevent any contact between the children and their relatives in Ukraine, as well as their return, and to “re-educate” them so that they become pro-Russian”.

These children are also available for adoption in Russia.

Ukraine also accuses the Russian forces of having abducted thousands of children, including orphans, into territories controlled by Moscow.

This Observatory had already denounced the relocation under forcing Ukrainians into the eastern areas of the country controlled by Russia and the atrocities committed by Russian forces since the start of the invasion on February 24.