Not only Putin: French lawyers appealed to the ICC with the demand to prosecute other persons involved in the deportation of children from Ukraine

In September, French lawyers Emmanuel Daoud and Gabriel Sebba, on behalf of the non-governmental organization "Pour l'Ukraine, pour leur liberté et la nôtre!" ("For Ukraine, for their freedom and ours!") and with the support of the NGO Russie-Libertés submitted a new complaint to the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the fact of illegal deportation and russification of Ukrainian children.

Source. This was reported by RFI.

Based on the results of their investigation, the authors of the report came to the conclusion that it is about a planned and carefully developed "policy", the implementation of which had already led to the announcement of russian president putin and the commissioner for children's rights under the president of the russian federation Maria Lvova-Belova as wanted by the International Criminal Court.

Putin and Lvova-Belova are the main "ideologues" of this "policy", but its practical implementation was facilitated by other leading persons – first of all, the governing party "United russia".

The new complaint lists the names of more than 30 officials.

Lawyers and human rights defenders demand from the ICC to issue warrants for the arrest of these people, including Dmitry Medvedev, Sergey Shoigu, Andrei Turchak, and others.

The resettlement and Russification of Ukrainian children (according to researchers, at least 25-30 thousand) requires organizers who implement this policy in each occupied region, and thousands of ordinary executors who provide logistics, as well as re-education, the document says.

"Everything was organized and planned with the clear intention to Russify Ukrainian children so that they lose any connection with their country, their family, their history and even their spirituality," says lawyer Emmanuel Daud. "This is called a war crime, a crime against humanity."

The nearly 100-page complaint submitted to the International Criminal Court documents the methods used to transform Ukrainian children into "russian citizens." The methods include not only violence but also heavy use of propaganda.

The document also talks about the practice of "medical filtering" to "screen out" "unhealthy" Ukrainian children.

While brainwashing Ukrainian children, they are forced into their heads that they must adhere to russian "spiritual and moral values", the first of which is "defense of the Motherland", which means joining the russian army.

"On the territory of russia, these children are subjected to real militarization. When russia teaches these children to kill, as soon as they become fit to serve in the army, it will use them for new military aggression, says Vira Yastrebova, a lawyer and director of the Ukrainian "Eastern Human Rights Group", who came to the Paris press conference.

Anna Kuznetsova (deputy speaker of the State Duma, ex-authorized on children's rights under the president of the russian federation) and Ihor Kastyukevich ("senator" from the occupied part of the Kherson region) play an important role in this process.

Yelena Milskaya, assistant to the russian "Orthodox" oligarch Konstantin Malofeev and head of the so-called National Center for Assistance to Missing and Injured Children, is also involved in the deportation of Ukrainian minors together with her husband, Minister of Emergency Situations Kurenkov (a former bodyguard of putin).

In the course of a grotesque disinformation campaign, the russian propaganda apparatus claims that children "were saved" from organ smuggling to Europe. And Kuznetsova went so far as to say that the campaign for "selling children" was organized "in cooperation with British paramilitary companies paid by Coca-Cola."

Dozens of russian and pro-russian officials are involved in the investigation, including: Sergey Aksyonov – head of the occupied Crimea, member of the Bureau of the "United russia"; Yevhenii Balytskyi – head of the occupied Zaporizhzhia region; Vitaly Ganchev – "head" of the occupation "administration" of the Kharkiv region; Sergey Kiriyenko – 1st Deputy Head of the Administration of the president of the russian federation; Volodymyr Saldo – head of the occupied Kherson region, and others.

"It is impossible to accurately calculate the number of Ukrainian children who have become victims of russian crimes and, in particular, deportation, in the conditions of the occupation of almost a quarter of the territory of Ukraine and russia's refusal to disclose data on abducted children," human rights activists note in their document.

"However, it has been established that of the 7.5 million children who lived in Ukraine until 02/24/22, 3.2 million remain today. Another 4 million are either refugees in Europe, or dead, or deported to russia.

According to various (Ukrainian, Western, and russian) minimum estimates, more than 300,000 Ukrainian children were deported to russia.

"But the true figure is even higher if we go by the data of the United Nations Office for Refugees, which estimates the number of people displaced to russia at 3 million. Given that the age pyramid of Ukraine for 2021 shows that 15% of the population is younger than 14 and 20% is younger than 19 years, it will amount to 450,000 minors. Out of this total number, only 19,546 cases were officially documented by the Ukrainian authorities," human rights activists emphasize.

It will be a long process for the ICC to confirm (or not) that the allegations contained in the report are substantiated, verifiable and within its jurisdiction before it can consider issuing new arrest warrants.

The authors of the new complaint are confident of success.

"When, after our first complaint about the role of vladimir putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, we said that the ICC would issue warrants for their arrest, everyone laughed at us," says lawyer Emmanuel Daud.

"We were told that the ICC would never prosecute a sitting head of state, let alone a permanent member of the UN Security Council. But it happened. The hardest part was done. Now we are talking about the layer below, about subordinates. I am sure that there will be a continuation," he emphasized.

Background. As reported, despite the ICC warrant, Mongolia did not arrest putin due to energy dependence on the russian federation. A Mongolian government spokesman said the supply is "critical" to the country's survival.