by Federico Fubini
Of the one million refugees arriving in the Russian Federation, almost 200,000 are minors and at least 1,700 are alone. Now the Kremlin is accelerating and facilitating their integration into families: a strategy to stem population decline
After three months of war, about a million Ukrainians are officially “refugees” within the Russian Federation: 920,000 according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, even more according to the Kyiv government. Few of them have voluntarily chosen to move to the country that sparked this conflict: almost all did so because they were given no other way to escape from the combat zones. Many were even forced to go to Russia or deported across the border. Of these, almost 200,000 are minors, and now at least 1,700 children are alone in Russia, unaccompanied: their parents have died or are missing, and they have no family with them to rely on.
Now they too are becoming spoils of war. An official note seven days ago from the Commissioner for Child Protection at the Presidency of the Russian Federation, a direct emanation of Vladimir Putin, paves the way for the systematic adoption of Ukrainian children deported without parents by Russian families. The first experiments in this sense have already begun in the Moscow region. Now, thanks to the measures taken by Kremlin Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, it will be very easy and quick to integrate these Ukrainian unaccompanied minors into Russian families. Training courses are also planned for the latter.
Viewed from Moscow, the entire action presents itself as a humanitarian initiative. Seen from Kyiv, it is child theft. “It’s a violation, they want to let our nation’s children be adopted in Russia after deporting them – comments Ukrainian opposition MP Yulia Klymenko from the World Economic Forum in Davos -. Our government is considering an international complaint against these measures ». Formally concerns the Russian Provision – says a May 16 press release of the Presidential Commission – “orphans and children without parental care who have citizenship of the Donetsk and Lugansk Republics or Ukraine.” Soon they can be adopted by families as if they were Russians, by presenting a few simple documents.The areas of origin of the children covered by the regulation are huge, even if they are theoretically the war zones of the Donbass: Moscow, for example, now considers Mariupol, from which at least 40,000 people have had to flee, to be part of the self-government .proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lug ansk towards Russia. Even war orphans or unaccompanied minors in the city most tortured by the Russians could become de facto citizens of the aggressor country.
So this war is now being fought around children as well, as if they were a trophy on the battlefield. And from Moscow’s point of view it is clear: since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the country has lost four million inhabitants and today the fertility rate of 1.5 children per woman does not allow to stop the population decline. “It becomes plausible that in Russia today, political power must be expanded without the need to widen the audience of the indoctrinating public and nurture young people who go to strengthen the army,” observes Andrei Kolesnikov, head of Carnegie’s Russia program Endowment for International Peace in Moscow (which has been closed for a few weeks). It is still too early to understand what impact Moscow’s new measures will have on children kidnapped from Mariupol, Donbass or brought to Russia via Belarus during the siege of Kyiv. Surely this is the war of a rising imperial power that is demographically troubled. And many innocent little ones are already paying the price.
May 24, 2022 (Modification May 24, 2022 | 09:09)
© REPRODUCTION RESERVED