“Ursula von der Liaien announced new financial assistance to Ukraine during a speech at the conference “Returning childhood and humanity – to promote peace in Ukraine by returning Ukrainian children””, – WRITE: www.radiosvoboda.org
Von der Liaien stated that the EU is ready to provide about 200 million euros to provide school dinners in Ukraine.
She stressed that the return of children stolen by Russia remains one of the key priorities of the European Union: “We will not stop until Ukrainian children return home.”
Among the specific steps of the EU, von der Liaien called the funding of the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office, joint projects with UNICEF for more than 10 million euros for rehabilitation of children, as well as sanctions against more than 50 people involved in deportations. She also reported that the EU joins the International Coalition for the return of Ukrainian children and in the near future organizes an international high -level summit dedicated to this topic.
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According to the official data of Ukraine, more than 20,000 Ukrainian children were found in Russia during a full -scale war in Russia and the occupied territories. At the same time, the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights Dmitry Lubinets suggested that Russia illegally exported about 150 thousand children from Ukraine, and the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for the Rights of the Child Daria Gerasimchuk called the figure in “several hundred thousand children, ie somewhere 200-300 thousand”.
In March 2023, the International Criminal Court in the Hague issued warrants for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the children’s Ombudsman of the Russian Federation Maria Lviv-Belova. They are suspected of committing war crimes – violent deportations and movement of the population, including children, from the occupied territories of Ukraine.
In July 2023, the Russian Commissioner for the Rights of the Child of Lviv-Belova stated that Russia has “accepted” about 4.8 million inhabitants of Ukraine since the beginning of a full-scale invasion, of which more than 700,000 were children. According to her, most Ukrainian children allegedly came to Russia with their parents or other relatives.