Mykola Kuleba, general director of Save Ukraine, an association that repatriated 176 Ukrainian children deported to Russia. In Kiev, March 22, 2023. ADRIEN VAUTIER / THE IMAGE FOR “DIE WELT”
As he picked up his pilgrimage staff and went before a U.N. panel in New York for the second time in a month, Mykola Kuleba, a quiet man who never raises his voice in public, cannot contain the anger that animates him hide. “What should I say to the world? I will tell them: “Shame on you!” And I will ask them why the UN or no one else is doing anything, why they are abandoning Ukrainian children. »
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The Save Ukraine association, led by Mykola Kuleba, alone repatriated 176 of the 386 Ukrainian children deported to Russia and returned to their country. A drop in the ocean in view of a deportation plan that, according to lawyers, amounts to genocide and in which Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Moscow Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, are the first two actors. The Russian war in Ukraine is said to be Be the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
Kiev has identified 19,546 deported children, while Moscow says it “welcomes” 744,000 children, whether accompanied or not, to Russian territory. The reality of the crime referred to in the Geneva Conventions as “deportation” and “forced relocation” lies between these two figures. Mykola Kuleba raises her arms helplessly. “And once again,” adds this former defender of children’s rights from the Ukrainian presidency: “If we count all the people living in the Ukrainian territories occupied since 2014 and in Russia, there are around 1.5 million Ukrainian children, the victims of a state.” Politics of Russification, who change their identity, their passport and who are taught to hate Ukraine. »
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“It’s genocide”
Mr. Kuleba, who is preparing to speak on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, September 19, had already addressed the UN Security Council in New York on August 24, Ukraine’s Independence Day. He implored the world’s powerful to provide “help and support” to the “children stolen by Russia” and pointed to an aspect that is rarely mentioned: the fact that children living in territories occupied for almost a decade , have become “weapons of war” against Ukraine.
“By mobilizing in the occupied territories, Moscow has turned the elders into Russian soldiers,” Mr. Kuleba accuses. Not only is this a genocidal Russification policy, but in practice it also means that thousands of them are dying fighting against their homeland, Ukraine. » The activist raises his arms again.
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