Russia could have deported hundreds of thousands of children from Ukraine — Lubinets

Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, said that Russia could have deported hundreds of thousands of children from Ukraine.

He said this on a national TV channel, Ukrinform quoted.

Currently, Ukraine has confirmation of more than 16 thousand cases of deportation of children.

"We have 16,228 confirmed, verified [cases of] Ukrainian children forcibly deported by the Russian Federation. These are children who are on the territory of the Russian Federation and have gone through the deportation process. I can only speculate about the total number because the verification process is complicated. I can assume that we may be talking about tens or even hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children who were forcibly deported by Russia," Lubinets was quoted as saying.

There may also be tens or even hundreds of children in the occupied territories. However, according to international law, forced deportation begins only when Ukrainian children are transported across the border by Russians.

"Even if they are forcibly taken to Crimea, the International Criminal Court will not treat it as deportation, because this is Ukraine, Crimea is Ukraine, but as soon as they cross the border, by the actions of the Russian military or the occupation authorities, only then does the deportation procedure begin," Lubinets added.