MINSK, September 25. /TASS/. Russia and Belarus are extremely worried about the challenges faced by Ukrainian families in Western countries, said Russian Ambassador to Belarus Boris Gryzlov.
He said that "for several months now, a media campaign has been underway in the West to make unsubstantiated accusations against Russia and Belarus of alleged forced deportations of children from Ukraine."
"Russia and Belarus are carrying out colossal work to reunite families, protect and provide necessary assistance to children who suffered from the actions of the Kiev regime," Gryzlov said. "We are far from gloating over the problems Ukrainians have faced in Western countries. On the contrary, we are extremely concerned about the current situation. Every case of a separated family is a human tragedy in which innocent children are the first to suffer."
Children taken from parents
The ambassador said that removals of children from Ukrainian nationals living abroad had already become systemic.
"In the summer of this year, the office of the Ukrainian Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights reported at least 240 such cases. There are reports of about 80 incidents in Germany. As of August this year, 75 children were taken from Ukrainian families in Poland, 11 in France, and 7 in Italy. Alarming news is also coming from other EU countries," Gryzlov said.
According to the diplomat, in some European countries, such as Italy, Ukrainian children, who end up there without parents, are transferred into the custody of local citizens or to specialized children's institutions, while their existing guardians are banned from communicating with such children. In one case, a violent incident involving the use of force against a child took place during the transfer of minors by local services.
"Such actions of ‘caring’ child protection services in European countries are not always caused by the failure of the child's representatives to fulfill their duties. Much more often the reason is the difference in approaches to child care and legislation regulating family affairs," Gryzlov went on to say.
Western reaction
The ambassador said that the West in the past turned a blind eye to the forced removal of children from Donbas to the areas controlled by Ukrainian forces.
"Neither the removal of children from living parents, nor the forced Ukrainianization of Russian-speaking minors bothered either Europe or the United States," he said.
"Why are such actions not classified as forcible detention of minors by the authorities of a foreign state? Why is Europe not concerned that Ukrainian children are taken away from home, forget their native language and are deprived of communication with their loved ones? Why are activists and human rights defenders inside the EU silent? Finally, what accusations against Russia and Belarus can we even talk about? Knowing the hypocrisy of the West, I'm sure that these questions, as usual, will remain unanswered," the ambassador said. "But now that Russia is evacuating children from the war zone in full compliance with international humanitarian law and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Brussels and Washington see this as 'illegal deportation.'"
Accusations labeled as insane
On 18 July, the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs approved a report on the situation in Belarus, in which it called on the EU countries and institutions to seek an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court in The Hague for the Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko for his role in the evacuation of children from the war zone in Ukraine. In late June, Lukashenko said attempts to bring him to an international court for hosting Donbass children in the country while they regained health were insane.
Gryzlov earlier said that instead of helping children who found themselves under Ukrainian shelling in Donbass, the West was trying to shift the blame to Russia, accusing it of some "kidnappings" of minors who were actually being rescued from the genocide unleashed by the Kiev regime. State Secretary of the Union State of Belarus and Russia Dmitry Mezentsev said that, by the decision of the Union’s governing bodies, about 2,100 children from the DPR and LPR spent time at health resorts in the Minsk Region. Belarusian Ambassador to Russia Dmitry Krutoy said that since the beginning of the conflict in Donbass, Belarus had been providing regular assistance to children from the region, hosting more than 3,500 of them for treatment and rehabilitation.