{"id":196196,"date":"2025-06-19T04:20:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-19T04:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/196196\/"},"modified":"2025-06-19T04:20:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T04:20:10","slug":"putins-abduction-of-ukrainian-children-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/196196\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin\u2019s abduction of Ukrainian children \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What makes this notable is its brazenness. Medinsky isn\u2019t simply denying a crime; he\u2019s attempting to rewrite accepted rules of war in real time, erasing legal distinctions between rescue and abduction. By framing Ukraine\u2019s demand for justice as theatrical propaganda aimed at \u201cEuropean grandmothers,\u201d he trivializes the ICC\u2019s arrest warrants for Putin and Lvova-Belova \u2014 warrants rooted in meticulously documented evidence. This is Russia\u2019s playbook: weaponize absurdity to corrode the credibility of international institutions, all the while continuing to commit the crimes those institutions are designed to punish.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"632\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Putin_and_Medinsky_-_Kalashnikov-1024x632.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6765798\"  \/>Medinsky isn\u2019t simply denying a crime; he\u2019s attempting to rewrite accepted rules of war in real time. | Kremlin via WikiCommons<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s simply no ambiguity about abduction by deportation or forcible displacement being a war crime. If there\u2019s no consent from the legal guardian, or the consent is made under duress, then consent is superfluous and bears no legal force.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>For nearly two years now, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thereckoningproject.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Reckoning Project<\/a> has been working on the ground to collect testimonies from witnesses and survivors of child abductions. The evidence is unequivocal in terms of the scope and intent of abductions staged by the Russians.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Russia\u2019s long-term goal is to erase the Ukrainian identity of over 1.5 million children remaining under the occupation. They are subjected to pro-Russian indoctrination, forced to adopt Russian names, passports, history, culture and language. But the Kremlin\u2019s efforts go even further: In many cases, Ukrainian children are put through Russian military training and paramilitary youth camps, like those modeled on the Young Army Cadets National Movement, or Yunarmiya.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>These programs are designed to instill loyalty to Russia and to prepare Ukrainian children for potential military roles, effectively weaponizing them against their own people, country and society.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Second, Medinsky\u2019s claims are not merely rhetorical tricks or alternative viewpoints \u2014 they\u2019re calculated attempts to conceal a war crime. If one follows his logic, Ukrainian children are supposedly being saved by Russian soldiers from the very invasion those same Russian soldiers launched. This circular reasoning not only exposes the absurdity of Moscow\u2019s position, but also reveals a deliberate pattern of deception. The narrative of \u201csaving\u201d children serves as a cover-up for internationally recognized war crimes \u2014 an effort to deflect accountability and confuse international observers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What makes this notable is its brazenness. Medinsky isn\u2019t simply denying a crime; he\u2019s attempting to rewrite accepted&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[41010,13071,660,809,48,7338,332,2663,811,2196,657,333,771],"class_list":{"0":"post-196196","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-accountability","9":"tag-disinformation","10":"tag-kremlin","11":"tag-negotiations","12":"tag-rights","13":"tag-rule-of-law","14":"tag-russia","15":"tag-sanctions","16":"tag-security","17":"tag-south-africa","18":"tag-ukraine","19":"tag-vladimir-putin","20":"tag-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114708114588987633","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}