Russia has abducted and deported up to 2,000 children from Ukraine since New Year 2023
The occupiers intend to throw children who come of age into the war.
Russian invaders have kidnapped and deported about 2,000 children from Ukraine since the new year 2023, the US ambassador to the OSCE, Michael Carpenter, said during a special meeting of the Permanent Council in Vienna, Ukrinform reported.
According to the diplomat, Russia has been actively taking children away from their parents in the occupied territories over the last two weeks and taking them to its territory under the guise of evacuation.
The US ambassador also noted that lists of children who should be sent to war after reaching the age of majority were being drawn up in occupied Donetsk and Luhansk:
Children born in 2005 and 2006 are already subject to compulsory military registration. This advance planning to use Ukrainian children as cannon fodder in Russia's war is just plain evil
We shall remind you that in November 2022, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that according to official figures alone, the Russian Federation had deported 11,000 Ukrainian children from Ukraine.