An open letter to European Heads of State and Government
We appeal to our compatriots and all European and world citizens to pressingly call upon the Heads of State and Government throughout Europe: Ukrainian children abducted and deported to Russia must be saved!
Over 300,000 Ukrainian children are currently being held on Russian territory, without any guarantees or external controls on their living conditions. Some of them are said to be deliberately separated from their parents by the Russian authorities.
Moreover, according to a UN survey, several thousand unaccompanied minors, orphaned or not, are at risk of being adopted by Russian families (Russia has not ratified the 1993 Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Inter-Country Adoption). In addition, Vladimir Putin has simplified the granting of Russian citizenship to these children by decrees of 25 May and 11 July 2022, thus facilitating adoption procedures for Russian families. Everything indicates that such forced adoption procedures have already taken place and are currently going on.
We must say NO to forced adoption and russification of kidnapped children!
Some of these children are already "in the process of re-education" – that is, russification! ─, as boasted by the Russian first television channel. The brainwashing of children is, in fact, part of the plan to eradicate the Ukrainian nation outlined by Timofei Sergeitsev, a close associate of Putin (RIA Novosti, April 2022), whose negationist remarks are taken up daily by the Russian media.
We cannot leave these thousands of forcibly deported and isolated Ukrainian children in the Kremlin’s hands. The forcible transfer of minors is a heinous and morally and politically unacceptable crime. According to the 1948 International Convention on Genocide (Article II), this is strictly speaking a genocidal act!
We urge the President of the European Council, the President of the European Commission, but also the Heads of State and Government of the whole of Europe to intervene unanimously and publicly by demanding from Russia the release of the children and all deported Ukrainian civilians.
We ask them to call on the relevant international organisations, including UNICEF and the International Red Cross, to intercede as soon as possible with the Government of the Russian Federation in order to visit these children, examine their living conditions and organise their repatriation to Ukraine.