Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has welcomed a resolution adopted on April 27 by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) saying Russia's forced transfer of Ukrainian children amounts to genocide.
The resolution said the documented evidence of the transfer of the children "matches with the international definition of genocide" and called for the safe return of the children to Ukraine.
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Zelenskiy hailed the resolution as an important decision that will help "hold Russia and its leaders to account." In his evening video message, he said it was the first recognition by such a high-level international organization.
"Practically speaking, this decision will significantly help our global work to bring Russia and its officials, including the head of the terrorist state, to account for genocide [and] a genocidal policy against Ukraine," Zelenskiy said. "The deportation of Ukrainian children is one of the well-thought-out elements of Russia's attempt to erase the identity of our people, to destroy the very essence of Ukrainians. This is a deliberate crime of genocide committed by Russian officials."
He added that Ukraine will continue at all levels to work for the return of all Ukrainian children taken from the country by Russia.
Ukraine has data indicating that nearly 20,000 children were taken from Ukraine and dispersed in different regions of Russian, he said.
American researchers were the first to report on the relocation of thousands of Ukrainian children to a network of sites in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.
The researchers said in a report published on February 14 that they had identified 43 camps and other facilities where at least 6,000 Ukrainian children had been held and said and the main goal was to "reeducate" the children to make them pro-Russian.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) on March 17 issued arrest warrants on war crimes charges for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Moscow’s commissioner for children's rights, citing the "unlawful deportation" of children.
Moscow has said the transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia was a humanitarian campaign to protect orphans and children abandoned in the war zone. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said last month the warrants were "meaningless" as Russia "does not cooperate" with the ICC.
The resolution said there was evidence that deported children had faced a process of "russification" through reeducation in Russian language, culture, and history.
The resolution passed by PACE said the transfers of Ukrainian children were "clearly being planned and organized in a systematic way" with the aim of "annihilating every link to and feature of their Ukrainian identity."
PACE called on the United Nations and the Red Cross to be granted access so they could gather information on the children concerned.