Ukrainian children adopted by Russian families? At a UN Security Council meeting on forced displacement in Ukraine, UN Under-Secretary-General for Human Rights Ilze Brands Kehris said that “there are accusations evidence of forcible transfers of unaccompanied children to Russian-occupied territory or to the Russian Federation itself”.
“We are concerned that the Russian authorities have adopted a simplified procedure for granting Russian citizenship to children who are not in the care of their parents, and that these children are eligible for adoption by Russian families,” said she added.
She also indicated that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, of which she is a member, had been able to “confirm” that the Russian armed forces had set up “triage” centers, a form of security control and collection personal and biometric data. These checks apply to persons leaving a combat zone or crossing into territory under Russian control.
The fear of sexual abuse of women
“We are concerned that such checks, and the detentions that follow, take place outside any legal framework and do not respect the principles of necessity and proportionality”, she said, referring to “credible information of “numerous human rights violations”.
The High Commission has itself been able to “document” cases where the people subject to this “filtration” were subjected to strip searches, sometimes having to undress. “We are particularly concerned about the risk of sexual abuse faced by women and girls.”
“Sent near the North Korean border”
US authorities on Wednesday unveiled a map showing the existence of a dozen of these “centers” in eastern Ukraine and the destinations of Ukrainians thus “filtered”. They are interrogated there to assess their degree of potential “threat” and are either allowed to remain in the territories under Russian control or sent to Russia.
“Russia has forcibly displaced hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to remote areas,” US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said before the Security Council meeting. “Some are sent to the far eastern reaches of Russia, near the North Korean border,” she said.
In May, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk estimated that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians would be deported to Russian “camps”. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had accused Russia of “forced deportations” of up to 1.6 million Ukrainians.