Russia is abducting Ukrainian children and training them to fight against their countrymen, Volodymyr Zelensky has claimed.
The Ukrainian president said that Kyiv had evidence that the Russians “push these [abducted] boys to the battlefield” and that they were “taught to hate their native country, to hate native people”.
“Ukrainians, can you imagine, such young Ukrainians, young boys, come to the battlefield and kill Ukrainians,” he said in an interview with CBS News aired on Sunday.
Although it is the first time Mr Zelensky has publicly levelled the accusation against Moscow, research groups, NGOs and state bodies have previously documented both the militarisation of Ukrainian children and the conscription of Ukrainians by the Russian occupation.
The Ukrainian president revealed that the Kremlin had attempted to include abducted children in prisoner of war exchange lists, hoping to swap them for its captured soldiers.
“They proposed us to exchange children with soldiers,” Mr Zelensky said. “Can you imagine?”
‘Difficult’ to retrieve children
Unlawful deportation, forcible transfer, “re-education” of civilians and hostage-taking are all classified as war crimes under international law.
The Ukrainian president said Kyiv had documented the abduction of at least 20,000 Ukrainian children by Russia. The real number is believed to be far higher, possibly in the hundreds of thousands. Ukraine has brought back 2,200 of them.
“I don’t see how Russians are ready to give us back these children,” Mr Zelensky continued, describing the process of retrieving them as difficult.