The United Kingdom has introduced new sanctions against eight individuals and three organizations that, according to the government, are involved in the deportation and indoctrination of Ukrainian children. This decision is a response to actions aimed at destroying Ukrainian cultural identity and the forced relocation of children from Ukraine.
This is reported by Kyiv24
Who is affected by the sanctions
The sanctions list includes Aymani Kadyrova, the mother of the head of the Chechen region of the Russian Federation, Ramzan Kadyrov. The “Akhmat Kadyrov Fund,” named after the former Mufti of Chechnya who led the region after switching sides to Moscow in 1999 and was killed in a terrorist attack in 2004, is also under restrictions.
Among the organizations targeted by the new sanctions are the All-Russian Public-State Movement of Children and Youth “Movement of the First” and the organization “Volunteers of Victory.”
The list of individuals subject to restrictive measures includes Valery Maiorov, Natalia Tyshchenko, Zamid Chalayev, Leila Fazleeva, Rinat Sadikov, Alexander Gurov, and Anastasia Akkuratova.
The scale of the deportation of Ukrainian children
According to official data from Ukraine, over 20,000 Ukrainian children have found themselves in the territory of Russia and in occupied regions during the full-scale war. Meanwhile, the Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, estimated the number of children illegally taken to Russia at around 150,000. The Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada for Children’s Rights, Daria Gerasimchuk, noted that this figure could reach “several hundred thousand children, that is, about 200-300 thousand.”
“The new sanctions are aimed at those who support Putin’s attempts to forcibly deport and indoctrinate Ukrainian children and destroy their Ukrainian cultural identity,” the British government reports.
In March 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian children’s ombudswoman Maria Lvova-Belova. They are suspected of committing war crimes related to the forced deportation and relocation of the Ukrainian population, including children, from occupied territories.
Maria Lvova-Belova stated in July 2023 that Russia has “accepted” about 4.8 million residents of Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, of which more than 700,000 are children. According to her, most Ukrainian children allegedly arrived in Russia with their parents or relatives.