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• June 12: Prosecutor General of Lithuania Nida Grunskene started a pre-trial investigation into the possible criminal transfer of Ukrainian children to Belarus.
• June 5: According to the data of the Belarusian People’s Anti-Crisis Administration, 1,150 Ukrainian children were deported to the territory of Belarus last year, since the beginning of this year – already a thousand. In total, at least 2,150 deported children are known.
• June 1: On Children’s Protection Day, Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets presented a special report to “Nerozkvitli” regarding the violation of the rights of Ukrainian children in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine and in Russia. The report covers the period from February 2022 to April 2023.
• June 1: With the participation of President Zelensky, the conference “UA: WAR. UNSANG CRADLE” on the occasion of International Children’s Day. The event was organized by the Office of the President and the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights. The conference is devoted to the protection of children’s rights in connection with Russia’s military aggression. Particular attention is focused on the crime of deportation, its scope and consequences.
• May 31: Ukraine has evidence of the participation of the Belarusian authorities in the deportation of Ukrainian children and is investigating the role of the Lukashenka regime, said the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets.
• May 29: Russian President Putin approved changes to the law that allows the forced transfer, i.e  of people from the occupied territories of Ukraine, as well as the holding of elections there.
• May 27: Vyacheslav, a minor boy deported by the Russians from temporarily occupied Mariupol, was returned to Ukraine. This was reported by the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine, Iryna Vereshchuk.
• May 25: Ukraine’s Ombudsman office rescued from imprisonment a woman who traveled to Russia to take her deported son.
• May 24: Russian occupation forces in Luhansk Oblast are preparing to abduct more children under the false pretense of conducting “medical examinations,” the National Resistance Center reported on May 23.
• May 23: The Russians are trying to lure children aged 12-13 to the Crimean Artek camp. The occupiers offer tickets to the camp to the winners of international competitions, in which teams from Kazakhstan, Israel, Belgium, Morocco, Egypt, Tajikistan and Armenia participate. This was announced by the chairman of the national security and defense committee of the Lithuanian Seimas. According to him, the occupiers resort to such actions for two reasons. First, to create an impression about the legitimacy of the occupation of Crimea. Secondly, to turn children from other countries into human shields against a possible counteroffensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
• May 21: The Investigative Committee of Russia brought charges in absentia and declared the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, and the judges of the International Criminal Court, who issued a warrant for the arrest of the President of the Russian Federation Putin and the Russian Commissioner for the Rights of the Child, Lvova-Belova, due to the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children.
• May 19: 14-year-old Veronika, who was deported to Russia by the occupiers, was returned to Ukraine. Currently, the teenage girl is undergoing rehabilitation and receiving the necessary medical and humanitarian assistance, said Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets.

Advocacy advances

1. The NATO Parliamentary Assembly recognized Russia’s crimes against Ukraine as genocide, and declared the terrorist regime in the Russian Federation “ruscism “, said the head of the permanent delegation of Ukraine to the PACE Alliance, Cherniev.
2. The Office of the Ombudsman together with the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi, the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Yermak opened the Child Rights Protection Center. The center will work with children who have become victims of crimes or witnessed them. At the facility, appropriate specialists will receive information from children and their families, conduct a medical examination, provide necessary assistance.
3. Jaanika Merilo and her fellow colleagues have just started their charity campaign Heroiam Slava aimed at looking for the deported Ukrainian children and forwarding their names to the Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission and NGO Save Ukraine.

Materials we facilitated

• Mark Savchuk on the forcible deportation of Ukrainian children on TVP World

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpo0992YxMA

• Peter Beaumont, a senior reporter for the Guardian, recounts the story of 15-year-old Alina, who was tricked into fleeing to Russia by her best friend’s mother. He tells Nosheen Iqbal why this system of camps, fostering and adoption is being used as a tactic of war.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2023/may/31/tracking-down-ukraine-abducted-children-podcast

• Mass repressions, arrests, executions – all this is about Russia. But this list is not complete, and mass deportations cannot be mentioned. This was practiced many years ago and is actively continued now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib_PDLv7ieU

• Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Russia has deliberately and systematically kidnapped Ukrainian children. The system created by the Russians is aimed at dissolving as many children as possible in Russian society, turning them into Russians. A new episode of the podcast “Damn Questions” about the deportation of Ukrainian children, about how the system of abducting Ukrainian children is organized, who among the Russians is responsible for it and whether it is possible to return more children to Ukraine.

https://www.pravda.com.ua/podcasts/podkast-klyati-pitannya/2023/06/1/7404883/

• А  visual article showing the horrors of that particular experience – being forcibly deported by Russians. For some forcible deportation is an unimaginable thing, impossible to grasp. This visual article allows the viewers to see each stage of such a horrific war crime in a cartoonish manner, shedding light on the unspeakable.

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/graphics/2023/05/30/a-choice-without-a-choice-illustrated-stories-from-ukrainians-deported-to-russia/10927969002/