Russian children’s commissioner rejects ICC war crime allegations as false

Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights on Tuesday dismissed (ICC) allegations that she was responsible for unlawfully deporting children from Ukraine as false.

The Hague-based ICC on March 17 issued arrest warrants for President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova for the war crime of unlawfully deporting children from areas of Ukraine occupied by Russian forces.

The ICC said it had information that hundreds of children had been taken from orphanages and children’s care homes in areas of Ukraine claimed by Russia. Some of those children, the ICC said, had been given up for adoption in Russia.

Lvova-Belova told a news conference in Moscow that the consent of children’s parents had always been sought, that the commission acted in the best interests of any child, and that it was more accurate to talk of guardianship rather than adoption.

If there were specific problems with specific families, she said she was ready to help solve them.

“It is unclear to the presidential commissioner for children’s rights what the International Criminal Court’s allegations specifically consist of and what they are based on,” her commission said in a statement about its work released before her news conference.

“The use of the formulation ‘unlawful deportation of population (children)’ in the ICC’s official statement causes bewilderment,” it said, adding it had not received any documents from the ICC, whose jurisdiction Russia does not recognise.

Donetsk and Luhansk, two Ukrainian regions claimed and partially controlled by Russia, had asked Russia to accept civilians, including orphans and children whose parents were missing, the commission said.

Lvova-Belova said Russia had accepted more than 5 million refugees from Ukraine’s Donbas region, including 730,000 children, since February 2022, when Putin ordered troops into Ukraine.

The most deadly war in Europe since World War Two has killed or maimed hundreds of thousands of men on both sides while millions of adults and children have been displaced by what has turned into a grinding artillery war.

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Since the invasion, Ukraine has cast Russia as a brutal imperial aggressor that has committed war crimes, including the theft of children. Russia, which says it is carrying out “a special military operation,” says the West has ignored Ukraine’s own crimes.

Lvova-Belova said she rejected the ICC’s allegations, accusations from Ukraine, and what her commission called disinformation from foreign journalists about alleged “deportations of children” which she said was false.

She dismissed claims that children had been taken to camps for alleged re-education and her commission, she said, did not know of a single case of a child from eastern Ukraine being separated from his or her blood relatives to be given up to a foster home.

The Kremlin has said the ICC arrest warrant is an outrageously partisan decision. Russian officials deny war crimes in Ukraine.

Putin allies have cast the ICC, which countries including China and the United States do not recognise, as a “legal nonentity.”