Russia’s forced deportation of Ukrainians was planned ahead of the war, says Blinken
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (Photo:Stefani Reynolds/Pool via REUTERS)
Russia has developed plans for its “filtration” operations in Ukraine and forced deportations of Ukrainians prior to its most recent invasion of Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on July 13.
These are the same methods Moscow used in its “pacification” of Chechnya, according to Blinken.
He added that up to 1.6 million Ukrainians – including 260,000 children – have been detained, interrogated, and deported from their homes.
“The unlawful transfer and deportation of protected persons is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians and is a war crime,” said Blinken.
According to the officials, these efforts are Russia’s blatant attempt to “change the demographic makeup of parts of Ukraine.”
“This is why we are supporting Ukrainian and international authorities’ efforts to collect, document, and preserve evidence of atrocities,” the secretary concluded.
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has instructed his officials to relocate nearly 100,000 Ukrainians to far-flung and sparsely populated Russian regions, according to an earlier report by The Independent.
Deporting Ukrainian children is one of the most heinous crimes of the Russian regime, Zelenskyy said on June 2.
Russia has deported 2 million Ukrainians from occupied territories, including several hundred thousand children, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said during his address to the Asian Leadership Conference (ALC) on July 13.
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