Around 1.6 million Ukrainian children living in temporarily occupied territories remain at risk of deportation and forcible transfer to Russia.
Ukraine’s Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, made the statement during the presentation of a special report titled “RESILIENT: Ukrainian Children Against Russia’s Systematic Inhumane Treatment.”
“Since 2022, around 1.6 million Ukrainian children have remained at risk of deportation and forcible transfer. I am deliberately emphasising this figure so that the entire world understands the scale of the potential tragedy facing the Ukrainian nation,” Lubinets stressed.
He noted that establishing the exact number of children deported or forcibly transferred by Russia is extremely difficult. According to Lubinets, several Russian sources reported in 2022 that more than 744,000 Ukrainian children had been taken from temporarily occupied territories to Russia.
“As of today, the verified figures are as follows: 770 Ukrainian children have been killed by the Russian military, 3,018 have been injured, 2,349 children are missing, and 23 children have been subjected to sexual violence. A total of 20,651 children have been identified as victims of deportation and/or forcible transfer,” the Ombudsman said, emphasising that these figures have been verified in Ukrainian government-controlled territory.
At the same time, Lubinets stressed that due to the lack of access to temporarily occupied territories, Ukraine cannot fully verify the number of children who have been killed, injured or gone missing there.
