Russia creates online catalogue to «sell» abducted Ukrainian children

Russia has created an online catalogue to «sell» Ukrainian children, Photo: Mykola Kuleba

Russia has created an online catalogue to «sell» Ukrainian children abducted from the temporarily occupied territories. They can be «filtered» not only by gender, but also by eye or hair colour.

This was stated by the head of the Save Ukraine charity organisation Mykola Kuleba.

Since 2014, children from the occupied territories of Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk regions have been systematically taken to Moscow and other regions of Russia at the request of Russian families.

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«It seems that the demand for children has decreased, so the occupiers are looking for new ways to «improve» this horrific system. Together with the Save Ukraine team, we found evidence that they have moved on to methods that can only be described as child trafficking,» says Mykola Kuleba.

He says that Russia has created a website where children can be selected by photo, «filtering» them by age, gender, eye colour, hair colour and more.

«They describe children as a commodity: «obedient», «calm» and so on. Just imagine — you can filter children not only by gender, but also by eye and hair colour! The way they describe our Ukrainian children is no different from a slave catalogue. This is a real child trafficking in the 21st century, which the world must stop immediately,» said the head of Save Ukraine.

In the post, Mykola Kuleba also emphasises that most of the children in this «catalogue» were born before the occupation and had Ukrainian citizenship. The parents of some of them were killed by the occupation authorities, while others were simply given Russian documents to legalise their abduction.

«When the Russians demand lists of abducted Ukrainian children during negotiations, they simply hand over the database from the website of their own Luhansk «Ministry of Education». The entire evidence base of their crimes is right there on their official resources. We at Save Ukraine will do everything to save these children. And return them to the most important things — home, family, country,» he adds.

As a reminder, on 2 June, during talks in Istanbul, Ukraine handed over to the Russian delegation a list of children it demanded to return. However, the head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medynskyi, said that there are «a couple of dozen, maybe a hundred» Ukrainian children in Russia.