Under pretext of ’recovery’, 31 Ukrainian children were deported to Russian Federation: two representatives of occupying authorities in Donetsk are under suspicion
The Security Service has gathered evidence against two further perpetrators involved in the illegal removal of Ukrainian children to the Russian Federation.
This was reported by the press offices of the SSU and the Office of the Prosecutor General, according to Censor.NET.
Details
We are referring to the head of the occupation administration in Donetsk, Oleksiy Kulemzin, and his subordinate, the head of the ‘Department for Family and Children’s Affairs’, Olena Verbovska.
According to the case file, they were involved in organising the deportation of Ukrainian children to the ‘Polyany’ holiday camp near Moscow, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation.
In this way, the individuals involved implemented the so-called ‘Decree No. 84’, which was signed by Denis Pushilin.
It has been established that the ‘document’ provided for the removal of underage residents from the temporarily occupied territories of our country to the aggressor state under the pretext of ‘health treatment’.
To implement this decision, Pushilin enlisted the help of his ‘adviser’ Eleonora Fedorenko and the former head of the ‘DPR’s Department for Family and Children’s Affairs’, Svitlana Maiboroda.
As a reminder, in the autumn of 2024, the SSU notified them in absentia that they were suspected of committing war crimes.
The investigation revealed that officials had organised the forced removal of at least 31 Ukrainian children to the Russian Federation. Among them were 16 boys and 15 girls.
According to the investigation, 22 Ukrainian minors were deported by the Russians from the temporarily occupied Mariupol district. In particular, three children were forcibly taken away from their father, who was subsequently imprisoned in the Olenivka penal colony.
The enemy forcibly removed a further nine children from children’s social care centres in Shakhtarsk and Khartsyzsk.
As well as being transferred to ‘Putin’s holiday camp’, some of the children were placed ‘in the care’ of Russian citizens. For example, one minor from Mariupol was forcibly handed over to Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian President’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights.
In doing so, the individuals concerned grossly violated the provisions of Article 49 of the Fourth Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, which prohibits the forcible displacement or deportation of persons from occupied territory.
Investigators from the Security Service have now notified Kulemzin and Verbovskaya of the charges against them in their absence. As these enemy collaborators are in hiding in the temporarily occupied part of Ukraine, comprehensive measures are being taken to bring them to justice.
