'Deportation of Ukrainian children': EU lawmakers call for Putin's prosecution

By Agnes Szucs

BRUSSELS (AA) – The European Parliament on Wednesday called for the prosecution of those responsible for what it called the forced deportation and adoption of Ukrainian children, including Russian President Vladimir Putin.

EU lawmakers held a debate in Strasbourg, France, at their plenary session on "The children forcibly deported from Ukraine and International Criminal Court arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin."

EU Commissioner Vera Jourova said in her opening remarks that the forced deportation and adoption of Ukrainian children by Russians amounts to a “massive scale” with at least 16,000 children involved according to the latest Ukrainian government statistics.

She stressed that “all EU countries have an obligation to comply with the arrest warrant and surrender” Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights.

Jourova said that the EU has already provided the International Criminal Court (ICC) with €10 million (approximately $11 million) to help it develop its prosecution capacities, and she reiterated the bloc’s backing for its work in the future.

In March, the Hague-based ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin and Lvova-Belova for the unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia during the war.

Under the rules, the 123 member countries of the ICC are obliged to detain and extradite them to The Hague if they enter their territory.

However, prior to the ICC ruling, Russia denounced "attempts to label as forced displacement" and said that Moscow "cares about children whose parents were killed by weapons supplied by Western countries" to Kyiv.

On Feb. 28, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that since its "special military operation," Moscow had transferred orphans from Russian-speaking territories of war-torn Ukraine to families and foster homes in Russia.

Nevertheless, during the debate in Strasbourg on Wednesday, the overwhelming majority of EU lawmakers expressed support for the ICC’s work and called for the prosecution of the crimes committed in Ukraine.

Petras Austrevicius, a Lithuanian member of the liberal Renew Europe group, called on the “European Union and the international community to use all possible means to locate, identify and return Ukrainian children to their families, as well as to their homeland Ukraine.”

In her slightly personal address, Lithuanian EU lawmaker from the center-right European People’s Party, Rasa Jukneviciene, pointed out that “history is repeating itself.”

She said that her mother was deported when she was nine years old, with her family to Siberia by Josip Stalin’s communist regime.

Jukneviciene welcomed the ICC arrest warrant against Putin and Lvova-Belova, but underlined that it should be only the “beginning” of the prosecution, as a “special tribunal for crimes of aggression against Ukraine” must be set up.

For his part, German politician from center-left the Greens party, Sergey Lagodisnky, stressed that “forced adoption and deportation is a crime,” and claimed that it could “constitute genocide against Ukraine people” under the Genocide Convention.

“Inhumanity, criminality cannot become the norm,” he asserted.