On April 27th, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) issued a resolution saying that the illegal relocation of Ukrainian children to Russian territory qualifies as genocide under international law.
According to the resolution, the stolen children are subjected to "Russification," which includes being prevented from communicating in Ukrainian and being re-educated in Russian. The paper also claims that the Russian state's strategy of kidnapping children is an element of a scheme to destroy Ukrainian identity.
The International Criminal Court's decision to pass arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Children's Ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova is praised in PACE's resolution. Since the beginning of the war, this agreement is the only international record that explicitly classifies the forced relocation of Ukrainian children as a form of genocide.
While Russia recognizes that it evacuated children out of occupied Ukraine, it claims to be doing so for their safety.
The International Criminal Court filed arrest warrants for Putin and Lvova-Belova in March, charging them with war crimes related to the expulsion of Ukrainian minors but not genocide.
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