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Britain and the United States on Wednesday accused Russia of using its position as current UN Security Council president to spread disinformation and propaganda, and blocked the UN webcast of a Security Council meeting convened by Moscow to discuss the removal of children from the prison to defend Ukraine.
The International Criminal Court last month issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Moscow’s commissioner for children’s rights, for the “war crime” of “unlawfully deporting and…transferring” children from regions in Ukraine to Russia occupied by his troops.
The UN ambassador of Ukraine said on Twitter on Wednesday: “Russian authorities have interrogated, arrested and forcibly deported more than 19,500 Ukrainian children from their homes in Ukraine to Russia.”
Moscow said the children were removed for their own safety and that it is working to bring back those who have families or legitimate guardians in Ukraine. Lvova-Belova, addressing the meeting via video, denied that any children had been officially adopted.
The United States, Great Britain and several other countries sent only young representatives to the meeting, who stood up and left the room when Lvova-Belova spoke. Before the start of the session, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters outside the council chamber: “We do not support [U.N. webcasts] used by a person to inform who we know has committed war crimes.”
“If she wants to give an account of her actions, she can do so in The Hague,” the website says ICC, a spokesman for the British mission said in a statement.
The ICC issues an arrest warrant against Putin for war crimes in Ukraine
The meeting was the latest row over Ukraine at the United Nations, which has become the main arena for direct diplomatic confrontations between Russia and the West. It was held under the so-called “Arria formula”, which allows each member to convene an informal meeting and decide who will provide information.
On Monday, Thomas-Greenfield said Russia’s assumption of the April 1 presidency, which rotates monthly among its 15 members in alphabetical order, was “like an April Fool’s joke.” Russia last held the seat in February last month, when it began its invasion of Ukraine.
“We expect them to behave in a professional manner,” she said. “But we also expect that they will use their space to spread disinformation and advance their own agenda regarding Ukraine, and we will be ready to confront them every single moment they try to do so .”
Russia has scheduled several more Council meetings on Ukraine, including one on April 24 to be chaired by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov – who also plans to chair a second session on the Middle East the next day.
In a press conference on Monday announcing his plans for the month, Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said Lavrov is open to meeting Foreign Minister Antony Blinken while he is in the United States if “the foreign minister plans to meet would like to have”. A State Department spokesman did not respond to questions about Blinken’s willingness to meet. The two spoke over the phone last weekend about US demands that Russia release Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested last week on espionage charges.
Wall Street Journal reporter ‘wrongly detained’ by Russia, says Blinken
Both the United States and Russia have used the informal Security Council meeting format to voice their positions on Ukraine over the past year, but all UN members must agree to broadcast the meetings on the UN’s live webcast. Britain protested first and the United States joined its efforts.
Russia only published the names of its invited mailers on Tuesday evening. An emailed note to council members said the meeting “aims to provide participants with objective information on the situation of children in the conflict zone in Donbass, as well as on the actions taken by the Russian authorities to evacuate children from the danger zone delivery .”
“Western mainstream media and some of the delegations,” it said, intentionally misrepresented the situation as “kidnapping, forced displacement.” [and] Acceptance.” Instead, the briefings would provide an opportunity to hear “firsthand” from Lvova-Belova and some of the children themselves.
Nebenzia began the session, which Russia broadcast on its YouTube channel, with videos of women saying they are Ukrainian mothers who lost custody of their children after being evacuated from Kiev to what was during the war the ambassador called “European slavery,” after Germany, Spain, and Portugal. It is a “widespread practice” by the Ukrainian armed forces to remove children from combat zones whose families are “waiting for Russian soldiers to rescue them”.
The United States “cynically accused us of kidnapping children,” Nebenzia said, accusing without further elaboration that the United States used “racist methods” to remove over 2,500 children from Vietnam in 1975, allowed their adoption, and later refused they give up “when their Vietnamese parents showed up”.
In her presentation, Lvova-Belova showed prepared videos of Ukrainian children in Russia who, according to her, were Ukrainian children in Russia – smiling, doing handicrafts, playing on swings and happily hugging their Russian carers.
“I hope this will help us understand the true facts and not rumors or baseless accusations,” she said.
She added that Russia has “taken in” more than 5 million people from Ukraine and the Donbass regions of Donetsk and Luhansk illegally annexed by Russia last year, including 700,000 children. “All came with parents or guardians,” including 2,000 who came with their “caregivers” from orphanages or children’s homes. The decisions to evacuate her, she said, “were made by the country [local] Authorities because there are no safe areas in Donbass.”
To date, Lvova-Belova said, “about 1,300 have been returned to their orphanages,” while 400 have been sent to Russian orphanages because the areas they came from were “constantly shelled,” and 358 have been “placed with foster families.”
Shortly after the Russian invasion last February, allegations began that Russia was bringing children from Ukraine to Russia – regardless of the motive – which are illegal under international law. In its statement on the war crimes charges, the ICC said that “there is reasonable grounds to believe” that both Putin and Lvova-Belova bear “individual criminal responsibility” for the illegal deportation and transfer of children.
Russia has said it does not recognize the authority of the International Criminal Court, of which neither it nor the United States is a member. But the warrants are valid in the 123 countries that are parties to the Treaty of Rome under which it was established.
Reports that several thousand children were abducted from the besieged city of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine last year are untrue, she said. “They were not evacuated, but initially transferred to a hospital” in Donetsk in the Donbass. Later, a group of 31 people was sent to “a children’s sanatorium in Moscow.” Another 22, she said, have been placed in “temporary custody.”
Lvova-Belova said that while some Ukrainian children were granted Russian citizenship, it was only to make it easier to receive services. All would also have kept their Ukrainian citizenship and could decide at the age of 18 which nationality they wanted.
In response to the Russian presentation, the French representative at the meeting called it a “cynical exercise in disinformation” and said that “a lie repeated a thousand times is a lie.” … Madame Lvova-Belova gave a completely misrepresentation of the situation. … These are war crimes.”
One year of Russia’s war in Ukraine
Portraits of Ukraine: Every Ukrainian’s life has changed – big and small – since Russia launched its full-scale invasion a year ago. They have learned to survive and support each other in extreme circumstances, in bomb shelters and hospitals, destroyed apartment complexes and destroyed marketplaces. Scroll through portraits of Ukrainians reflecting on a year of loss, resilience and fear.
Attrition: Over the past year, the war has morphed from an invasion on multiple fronts that included Kiev in the north to a conflict of attrition largely centered on a vast territory to the east and south. Follow the 600-mile frontline between Ukrainian and Russian forces and get a glimpse of where the fighting was concentrated.
Living apart for a year: Russia’s invasion, coupled with Ukraine’s martial law barring military-age men from leaving the country, has forced millions of Ukrainian families to make agonizing choices about how to balance safety, duty and love, with once-intertwined lives no longer are recognizable. This is what a train station full of farewells looked like last year.
Deepening of the global divide: President Biden has dubbed the reinvigorated Western alliance forged during the war a “global coalition,” but a closer look suggests the world is far from settled on the issues raised by the Ukraine war to be united. There is ample evidence that efforts to isolate Putin have failed and that sanctions have not stopped Russia thanks to its oil and gas exports.
Understanding the Russia-Ukraine conflict
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