UKRAINE, Sep. 15 — Russian “Gazprom”, state-owned energy and gas company, financed the deportation of Ukrainian children from temporarily occupied territories, said Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights, during a meeting with Isabelle Berro-Amadeї, Monaco’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Chair of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.

According to Lubinets, since the full-scale invasion Russia has forcibly transferred more than 20,000 children, with major businesses, including Gazprom, allegedly involved in financing the transfers. 

He added that the Russian side has changed children’s names, dates and places of birth, and imposed the Russian language on them. The Russian side also has recruited transferred children into “Yunarmiya” (in eng. – “the Young Army”), a Russian state-run youth paramilitary organization that trains children and teenagers for future military service.

“This is not an ‘evacuation’. It is the systematic erasure of Ukrainian identity and the forced militarization of children. The goal is clear – to raise a generation ready to fight against Ukraine and other ‘Russia’s enemies’ that the Kremlin may designate in the future,”  Lubinets said.

Apart from the forced children’s transportation, Lubinets concluded that more than 265,000 Russia’s war crimes have been recorded, including illegal detention of civilians, forced passportization, attacks on civilian infrastructure, ‘civilian safaris’ in frontline regions – targeted hunting of people using FPV drones, etc.

Dmytro Lubinets called for establishing a Special Tribunal to provide legal assessment of the actions of Russia’s leadership and ensure accountability for its crimes against Ukraine. 

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