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The Kremlin children’s rights advocate accused of war crimes for overseeing Moscow’s mass abduction of Ukrainian children is now openly mocking Ukrainian families who try to get their children back from Russia, according to a local report.
Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum on Thursday, Maria Lvova-Belova described Ukrainian children forcibly transported to Russia as if they were in need of fixing, lamenting that Russia will have to “re-educate” them after eight years of “powerful propaganda” in Ukraine, according to the local outlet Rotonda Media.
Ukraine’s U.N. ambassador has said nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children were ripped away from their families or taken from orphanages during the war and forcibly transported to Russia. Investigations by the Associated Press and independent Russia media outlets found that in many cases the children were taken away and described as “orphans” in Russian propaganda despite having Ukrainian family members or parents. Some of them were quickly adopted out to Russian families.