Kyiv said that thousands of Ukrainian children were “abducted” by Russian forces and taken to Russia, and the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry indicated that 2,389 children had been transferred across the border from the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, in the east of the country.
According to the newspaper “The Independent”, the US embassy in Kyiv, commenting on this information, explained that what Russia is doing is not helping children, but “it is a kidnapping,” while the Ukrainian ministry described what is happening as a “flagrant violation of international law.”
Although it cannot be independently verified, the kidnapping allegations come after authorities in the port city of Mariupol said that several thousand of its residents were forcibly deported to Russia, while reports indicated that Moscow was planning to kidnap Ukrainians protesting the presence of invading forces in their country and transported across the border.
Meanwhile, Moscow continues to besiege cities across Ukraine, including Mariupol, which have been largely destroyed after more than three weeks of Russian bombing.
Describing the effects of two large bombs that hit Mariupol on Tuesday, the local council said the city had been reduced to “ashes and dead earth”.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky echoed that, telling Italy’s parliament via a video link on Tuesday: “There’s nothing left there.”
The port city on the Sea of Azov was home to 400,000 people before the Russian invasion, and those who remain are struggling with limited food and water supplies while most can no longer flee due to repeated Russian bombing.
Some managed to escape from the city, and a Mariupol survivor was trembling upon arriving by train in the western city of Lviv on Tuesday, saying “the city has no connection with the outside world.”
“We couldn’t ask for help, people there don’t even have water,” said Julia Kretzka, who was helped by volunteers to escape with her husband and son.
The humanitarian situation is also desperate in other parts of the country. According to the authorities in Kyiv, hundreds of thousands of civilians have run out of food in Kherson, the only major city that fell to Russian forces.
Mercy Crops humanitarian response advisor Steve Gordon, who visited the eastern city of Kharkiv on Tuesday, warned of severe food shortages across the country.
He said Ukrainian civil organizations are leading the relief effort, but they can do little.