The Russian commissioner for children’s rights, who has an arrest warrant against her for war crimes for having deported children from Ukraine, told a UN meeting on Wednesday that they were taken away for their safety and that Moscow is coordinating with international organizations the return to their families.
Ambassadors from Western countries boycotted the informal meeting of the UN Security Council, sending low-level diplomats instead. In addition, the representatives of the United States, Great Britain, Albania and Malta left the meeting when Maria Lvova-Belova began to speak via video conference.
The International Criminal Court last month issued an arrest warrant for her and Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing them of kidnapping children from Ukraine.
Russia, which holds the rotating Security Council presidency this month, called Wednesday’s meeting to counter what it says is false information about Ukrainian children.
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters before the meeting that Washington strongly opposed the meeting and joined Britain in blocking the UN from broadcasting the meeting.
Lvova-Belova “must not be allowed to have an international podium to spread disinformation and try to defend her horrible actions that are taking place in Ukraine,” Thomas-Greenfield said.
The Associated Press reported in October on Lvova-Belova’s involvement in the kidnapping of Ukrainian orphans. The AP investigation found that the open effort to place Ukrainian children in Russia for adoption was well advanced. Ukrainian authorities claimed at the time that nearly 8,000 children had been deported to Russia, but the exact number was difficult to determine.
Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, opened the meeting by saying its aim was to “unmask the West’s blatant double standard.”
“Part of this propaganda campaign is the silencing by the West of the fact that in European countries Ukrainian refugees are having their children taken away from them,” he said. Videos of some women claiming their children had been taken from them in Europe were then shown.
Nebenzia also insisted that, contrary to Western claims, “there have been no forced adoptions.” She maintained that some Ukrainian children are in foster homes and stated that “there are no obstacles” for them to maintain contact with their families in Ukraine.
The AP investigation found that Russian officials deported Ukrainian children to Russia without their parents’ consent, lied to the children that they were not wanted by their parents, used them for propaganda fines and gave them families and Russian citizenship.
