Russia refuses to return abducted 14-year-old Ukrainian girl, opens criminal case against her to prevent it
Dmytro Lubinets (Photo:Дмитро Лубінець/Telegram)
Russia has opened a sham criminal case against a 14-year-old girl who was abducted from Ukraine in order to prevent her return to her homeland, Dmytro Lubinets, the Human Rights Commissioner of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada parliament, said on Ukrainian national television on April 29.
Lubinets said the Russians opened the case against the girl when it became known that the Ukrainian authorities were attempting to obtain her return from Russia. He did not give details of the nature of the criminal case.
“We showed (at a meeting of the UN Security Council of which Russia is currently the president — ed.) a photo of this girl,” Lubinets said.
“She is 14 years old, and she was taken by the Russians quite deliberately, and they are deliberately keeping her virtually captive and not allowing other Ukrainian children to see her.
“…When we started dealing with the issue of returning her return, Russia allegedly opened criminal proceedings against her there,”
According to him, the girl was examined by doctors without the permission of her parents.
Lubinets added that the Russians had said they would not return the child until the "court case" is completed. He said believes that this case once again shows that Russia does not want to return Ukrainian children that it has deported from the occupied parts of Ukraine.
"Just think about (this) cynicism: There’s a mother in Ukraine, she is looking for her child, and the Russians, knowing this, invent some kind of court case — solely in order not to hand over the girl, so that it would not set a precedent of us (Ukrainians) … being able to take back our Ukrainian children."
Lubinets called on the UN not only to express deep concern, but also to create an effective mechanism for the return of deported Ukrainian children home from Russia. He believes that the UN should create a special mission that would go to Russia to take away the Ukrainian children who are there.
Ukraine has handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross a list of more than 19,000 Ukrainian children who have been illegally deported by the Russian occupiers from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.
On March 17, the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the Netherlands issued arrest warrants for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and his children's rights ombudsman, Maria Lvova-Belova. They are both accused of illegally deporting children from Ukraine to the Russian Federation in the period from Feb. 24, 2022. In its resolution, PACE welcomed the decision of the International Criminal Court.
The dictator can be arrested on the territory of 123 countries that have ratified the Rome Statute.
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