Ukrainian officials have accused the Russian government of pursuing a deportation policy, forcing civilians – including thousands of children – into Russia against their will and holding them “like souls for a swap fund.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that more than 2,000 children have been “stolen” from the besieged port city of Mariupol, which has been under sustained Russian attack since the early days of the invasion.
Describing the situation in the city as a “humanitarian catastrophe,” Zelenskyy told a gathering of independent Russian journalists that “according to our information, more than two thousand children have been taken away. That means they were stolen.”
“Your exact whereabouts are unknown. You can be there with or without your parents,” said Zelenskyy. “All in all, it’s a disaster. I can’t even tell you what that looks like. Its scary. They hold them like souls for a barter fund.”
Ukrainian officials have made similar claims regarding other regions. CNN cannot independently verify claims about the number of children brought to Russia from Mariupol and other cities.
What was claimed? The Russian Defense Ministry announced on March 20 for the first time that 16,434 people, including 2,389 children, had been evacuated from various locations the day before. Those places included the Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic, according to the ministry, which said people left of their own accord.
But the next day, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said that the same number of children had actually been evacuated by Russian forces from Donetsk and Luhansk regions. “Such actions are a gross violation of international law, particularly international humanitarian law,” the ministry said.
Since then, estimates from Ukraine about the number of people deported to Russia have increased.
On Saturday, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said the Ukrainian government estimated the number of Ukrainians forcibly deported to Russia since the invasion at nearly 40,000.
Those claims were backed up by Denis Pushilin, leader of the pro-Russian Donetsk People’s Republic, who said on Sunday around 1,700 people were being “evacuated” daily from the besieged Ukrainian port of Mariupol and other cities.
“Every day, on average, about 1,700 people come to the temporary accommodation center for evacuees in Volodar, and the same number of people leave it,” Pushilin said in a statement on Telegram, referring to a settlement known in Ukrainian as Nikolske, about 21 km northwest of Mariupol.
“Residents of Mariupol and other settlements that will be liberated from the occupation of the Kiev regime arrive here,” Pushilin said. “People will be provided with essentials, medical care and then evacuated to the Russian Federation.”
Debate on Red Cross Office: Amid the arguments over alleged Russia policy, the role of the Red Cross humanitarian network has also been wrestled with.
On Friday, Vereshchuk accused the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Peter Maurer, of making a “very questionable decision” to open an office in Rostov – about 60 kilometers from the border with Ukraine. Such an office would “legitimize” Russia’s deportations, she suggested.
The Red Cross issued a statement denying these claims. The ICRC, which has generally kept a low profile in public, responded after what it described as “misinformation circulating on the internet” that it was helping Russia get tens of thousands of people out of the country.
It said it doesn’t have an office in Rostov, but is “expanding our regional footprint to respond to needs where we see them.”
CNN’s Nathan Hodge, Andrew Carey and Olga Voitovych contributed coverage.