A film about the deportation and Russification of Ukrainian children
A documentary was released about the forced deportation and Russification of Ukrainian children.
“The Russian military put us in Kamaz trucks like animals and took us to some kind of hangar. I was sitting in a filtration camp, waiting for my mother for several hours, but they did not let me say goodbye, and said that they were taking me away from my mother and would take me to an orphanage. A Russian family will take me there,” says Sasha from Mariupol. He is 12 years old and has been looking for his mother for over a year.
In more than a year of full-scale war, Ukraine has managed to return less than 400 children. At the same time, Russia claims to have “evacuated” 744,000 Ukrainian children. Since diplomacy with the aggressor country is not working, Russia continues to illegally take children from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.
the movie “Mutilated Childhood”
In the film “Mutilated Childhood”, children and their parents told the online.ua team their own stories. Some of them were held captive, some were forcibly taken to a health camp, some were separated from their parents during the so-called filtration measures.
the movie “Mutilated Childhood”
The project documents the testimonies of children about the war crimes of the Russian Federation against the Ukrainian people. The documentary photos and video footage for the film “Mutilated Childhood” were provided by the Children of War information platform and the Save Ukraine charity foundation.
The stories of the characters illustrate that Russia’s abduction of children from Ukraine is a well-planned and well-organized process based on typical scenarios: deception or murder of parents, abduction of orphans, deportation under the pretext of health improvement and filtration camps.
“We have already analyzed at least five kidnapping scenarios. The Russians have a scenario where they first kill the parents and then abduct the children. The second scenario is when they take children directly from their families. The third is when they separate children from their parents during the so-called filtration procedure. Another scenario, the most widespread, is when parents allegedly voluntarily send their children to Russian camps for so-called rest due to unfit living conditions,” says Daria Gerasymchuk, Advisor to the Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights and Child Rehabilitation, coordinator of the Children of War portal.
Myroslava Kharchenko, a lawyer at the Save Ukraine charitable foundation, points out that the occupiers have improved their skills in Russifying Ukrainian children. They had the opportunity to practice in Donbas and Crimea. They came to the conclusion that when a child stays for a long time without parents and relatives, without proper support in an environment that is alien to them, they begin to believe what they are told.
the movie “Mutilated Childhood”
Onysiya Sinyuk, a legal analyst at the ZMINA Human Rights Center, noted that children are sent to Crimea for “rehabilitation,” that is, within the occupied territories, but children are also sent much further, for example, to Krasnodar Krai, Anapa, or Magadan.
The main goal of the Russians is to impose their ideology and destroy Ukrainian identity.
“The purpose of this – is to reformat the minds of our children in order to turn them into adherents of the “Russian world.” – adds Vitaliy Lunev, a full member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.
Bohdan Tkach, a doctor and doctor of psychology, emphasizes that this methodology they use on children is very similar to how they destroyed personality with the help of such institutions as the Gulag. It’s practically the same system, but with legal aspects taken into account to avoid liability, but the essence is the same – to break the personality.
To this end, Putin has already changed Russian legislation by signing two acts that simplify the procedure for the adoption of Ukrainian children by Russian families and effectively recognize all children under 14 living in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine as Russians.
“The Russians want to turn all Ukrainian children into Russian ethnicity. To do this, they have changed the legislation. In fact, Putin has already committed a war crime – genocide – by his actions,” says Dmytro Lubinets, Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights.
The return of abducted children is a slow process, as a separate mechanism is being developed for each case.
“In fact, there is no single mechanism for the return of Ukrainian children. Those procedures that should work in theory have not worked in practice. For example, the International Committee of the Red Cross has the greatest mandate in this matter. It hasn’t worked out. Therefore, each time it is practically a separately created operation to rescue a child or a small group of children.” — says Darya Gerasymchuk, Advisor to the Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights and Child Rehabilitation, coordinator of the Children of War portal.
The entire democratic world understands that Russia’s abduction of children is a genocide of the Ukrainian people. The warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for the arrest of Putin and Russian Children’s Commissioner Maria Levova-Belova marked the beginning of a “historic responsibility” to which all involved will be held accountable.
Photo: press service
