In early January, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a highly controversial decree granting Russian citizenship to Ukrainian children deported to Russia. In accordance with the document, children who are citizens of Ukraine can acquire Russian citizenship by Putin’s personal decision.
The above actions of the Russian President to transfer children from one national group to another, which is a sign of genocide, should be taken into account by the International Criminal Court. The Court previously issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and children’s ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova, who are considered involved in the crime.
In particular, the President of the Russian Federation stated that the deportation of Ukrainian children by the Russians was “absolutely legal,” and the children’s ombudsman, who adopted a boy deported from Mariupol, claimed that she was not dealing with deportation, but with “evacuation from shelling.”
When filling out an application for Russian citizenship, Ukrainian children do not have to provide information about the applicant’s place of residence, his contact details, but only the address and working contacts of the applicant, who “may disappear at any moment.”
Ukrainian children should not be “legally” on the territory of the Russian Federationб and Russian citizenship to Ukrainian children is the solution for this problem. It may happen that “legally” not a single Ukrainian child will remain in the Russian Federation, because all of them can “become Russians” over the next three months.
The forcible transfer of children from a protected group to another group has been established as one of the material elements of the crime of genocide since March 28, 1947. The separation of children from their parents leads to the fact that a culture and mentality that is different from their parents are imposed on them, who are vulnerable and susceptible at this age, the commentary to Article 3 (a) of the draft Genocide Convention said. Such a process, as a rule, quickly leads to the disappearance of the group as a cultural unit, in fact to genocide. Thus, the Russian authorities, led by Putin, must face a fair trial.