EU, UK punish Russians for deportation of Ukrainian children | News of the Russia-Ukraine war

Russian organizations and officials have been accused of abducting and training children during the war in Ukraine.

The European Union and the United Kingdom they will punish on Russian organizations and officials accused of systematically deporting and indoctrinating Ukrainian children.

The EU announced its objections to 23 public and private organizations on Monday. The UK immediately unveiled a massive program targeting 85 individuals and organizations, nearly a third of which were linked to what it said was a Russian campaign to deport and kill Ukrainian child soldiers.

Russia has expelled and resettled nearly 20,500 Ukrainian children since Moscow launched its invasion in February 2022, an EU report said. It said this is a violation of international law.

The EU said the designations target organizations and individuals participating in programs that allow children to be educated by Russia, including patriotic activities, psychological training and military activities.

The sanctions, which include product freezes and travel restrictions, were agreed by 27 EU countries along with Canada and the UK, which also announced similar measures.

“Child abduction is not an accident. It is a deliberate Russian policy, an attack on the future of Ukraine,” the EU ambassador, Kaja Kallas, told reporters at a press conference.

The UK sanctions announcement named the Center for Military and Patriotic Training and Education of Youth, known as the military headquarters, a Russian government agency where Ukrainian children are said to be receiving military training and pro-Kremlin ideology.

He was also targeted by Yulia Sergeevna Velichko, the youth minister in the Moscow-based Luhansk People’s Republic, for her role in implementing the government’s mandate.

UK Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Yvette Cooper said the UK would continue to work closely with its partners to support every effort to identify and trace abducted children.

Russia does not refuse to take the children but says it has done so in order to protect them, to remove them from the front areas, and says it is ready to return them when relatives come to confirm.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a verdict to be arrested to Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2023 for the war crime of illegal deportation of children from Ukraine.

In response to the announced sanctions, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said: “These are the ones who are ‘re-indoctrinating’ the children of Ukraine, making them hate their country, and one day they will take up arms to fight against Ukraine.”

The UK’s broadest sanctions package also targeted Russian military activities, with the remaining measures targeting individuals and organizations linked to Kremlin propaganda.

Among them were 49 people who worked for the Social Design Agency, a Russian government-backed agency accused of conducting subversive and subversive activities, including trying to establish pro-Russian organizations in Armenia and predicting the results of upcoming elections.

In Russia’s strong unified culture, the Caucasus has recently moved away from Moscow.

Last week, the Armenian ambassador was invited to protest what the Kremlin described as “terrorist threats against Russia” that Zelenskyy made in Yerevan.