[Update 04/05/2023]. It seems that some children are being evacuated from the Ukrainian war zone indefinitely and placed in Russian foster homes. Some of them are orphans. There is no evidence that this is being done against the will of parents.
Russia says ready to return children if parents ask for them by the South China Morning Post.
- The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of the “unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children to a network of camps inside Russia. The warrant was based on a report by the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab center, which is funded by the U.S. State Department.
- U.S. journalist Jeremy Loffredo visited one of Russian government-sponsored camps in question. At the Donbas Express, located just outside of Moscow, Loffredo met youth from war-torn regions who were flourishing thanks to free music instruction, and grateful to be in a secure environment.
- A Grayzone review of the Yale HRL report found the paper’s content contradicted many claims contained in the ICC warrant. It also undercut incendiary statements its director, Nathaniel Raymond, issued during media appearances.
- In an interview with Loffredo, Yale HRL’s Raymond further contradicted allegations he made in a CNN interview about a massive “hostage situation” underway in Russia, acknowledging that most of the camps he researched were “teddy bear”-like cultural programs. He also disclosed his collaboration with U.S. intelligence.
ICC’s Putin arrest warrant based on State Dept. funded report that debunked itself by Jeffrey Loffredo and Max Blumenthal for The Grayzone.
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Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, commissioner of children’s rights, have been indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of kidnaping thousands of Ukrainian children and taking them to Russia to be Russianized.
An investigation by the Grayzone has shown this to be the opposite of the truth. The children are from families in Ukraine who consider themselves Russian.
They are fighting to prevent their children from being forcibly Ukrainianized – that is, forbidden to speak the Russian language, attend the Russian Orthodox Church and learn about Russian culture.
The children went to Russia temporarily, with their parents’ consent, to enjoy musical education and to be temporarily safe from life in a war zone.
Jeremy Loffredo, a journalist, was in Russia in November, 2022, and happened to visit one of these camps, the Donbass Expresss, not knowing it was to be the subject on an international criminal case. He saw happy children, singing and learning to play musical instruments. True, they sang Russian songs
Loffredo then checked the Yale HRL report, on which the charges are based. The writers of the report never visited the youth camps, never attempted to contact parents and did all their research online.
Yet the report does not deny the basic truth of what Loffredo said – that at least many of the children went to the camps with their parents’ consent, took part in harmless “teddy bear”-like programs and returned home.
The real threat to the children is war – not just the 2022 Russian invasion, but the civil war that started in 2014 with Ukraine’s anti-Russia coup. The way to protect the children is to end the war. The indictment makes that harder to do.
Russia doesn’t recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC. Neither does the USA.
[Update 04/25/2023. Another view. I don’t regard Foreign Policy magazine as an impartial source, but the facts seem more ambiguous than I had assumed.
Rescue Efforts Underway for Ukrainian Children Taken to Russia by Liz Cookman for Foreign Policy.]
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