Ukraine is preparing another package of sanctions aimed at Russian citizens, legal entities, and vessels involved in the illegal export of Ukrainian children and the activities of the so-called shadow fleet of the Russian Federation. This was stated by President Volodymyr Zelensky.
This is reported by Kyiv24
Sanctions Against the Shadow Fleet and Collaborators
According to the president’s announcement, the sanctions lists include officials from the state system of the Russian Federation, collaborators from temporarily occupied territories, as well as propagandists who support Russia’s criminal actions. A separate sanctions list includes 23 vessels used by Moscow for oil exports, including under various flags, including the Russian flag. Some of these vessels have already been sanctioned by partner countries, and Ukraine continues to work on synchronizing the relevant restriction regimes at the international level.
“The second sanctions list includes 23 vessels that Moscow uses for oil exports. Sanctions have already been applied to part of this list by our partners. We are working to synchronize all our sanctions regimes – the sanctions of our partners in Ukraine and Ukraine’s sanctions in the jurisdictions of our partners,” he stated.
The President’s Office has already published the relevant decrees regarding the implementation of decisions made by the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine. One of them concerns the aforementioned 23 vessels, while another pertains to four organizations, including the Russian “Yunarmiya” branch in the occupied part of the Donetsk region. Additionally, sanctions have been imposed against 20 Russian citizens, some of whom hold Ukrainian citizenship.
Scale of Ukrainian Child Abduction
According to official information, since the beginning of the full-scale war, over 20,000 Ukrainian children have found themselves on the territory of the Russian Federation or in temporarily occupied territories. The Ombudsman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, states that the actual number of abducted children may reach 150,000, while the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Darya Gerasimchuk, estimates this figure at 200,000 to 300,000 individuals.
In March 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova on suspicion of committing war crimes – forced deportations and the relocation of civilians, including children, from the occupied territories of Ukraine.
For her part, in July 2023, Russian Children’s Ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova stated that since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Russia has “accepted” approximately 4.8 million residents of Ukraine, of which more than 700,000 are children. According to her, most of these children allegedly arrived with their parents or relatives.