The United Nations said on Wednesday there were credible allegations that Moscow’s forces had taken children from Ukraine to Russia for adoption as part of major forced relocations and deportations.
“There have been credible allegations of forced transfers of unaccompanied children to Russian-occupied territory or to the Russian Federation itself,” Ilze Brands Kehris, the UN deputy secretary-general for human rights, told the Security Council.
“We are concerned that the Russian authorities have introduced a simplified procedure for granting Russian citizenship to children without parental care and that these children could be adopted by Russian families,” she said.
Brands Kehris told a Security Council meeting on Ukraine that Russian forces are also conducting a “filtration” operation, subjecting Ukrainians in the occupied territories to systematic security checks that have resulted in “numerous” human rights violations.
“In cases documented by our office, Russian forces and related armed groups have subjected individuals to strip searches during ‘filtration’, sometimes with enforced nudity, and detailed interrogations about the individual’s personal background, family ties, political views and loyalties.” , she said.
The filtering procedures included examining people’s mobile devices, collecting personal identity information, and taking pictures and fingerprints, she said.
Some Ukrainians believed to be close to the Ukrainian government or military have been tortured and forcibly removed and taken to Russian penal colonies and other detention centers, she said.
“We are particularly concerned that women and girls are being subjected to sexual abuse during ‘filtration’ procedures,” she said.
Earlier, the US State Department said that the office of Russian President Vladimir Putin directly manages the filtering program and forced relocation of thousands of Ukrainians to Russia.
“Russia has systematically used the practice of forced deportations before, and the fear and misery it induces for people forced to live under Kremlin control is difficult to exaggerate,” said the foreign ministry’s deputy spokesman, Vedant Patel.
“We judge that the Kremlin uses filtering operations as crucial in its efforts to annex areas of Ukraine under its control,” he said.
