Who would have imagined that centuries later, International Criminal Court President Piotr Hofmański – himself of Polish nationality – would read aloud arrest warrants echoing these very crimes against Ukraine’s children.īeyond intimidating parents, Moscow authorities have consistently operated for centuries from the belief that children can be “re-educated” to forget their families, deny their communities and forsake their identity for ideological loyalty to the state. The artist Piotr Michaelczewski (1807-1886) later captured another Moscow-directed mass deportation in his haunting painting, “Abduction of Polish Children in Warsaw by Muscovites in 1831.” Historians describe one such 1794 deportation, after an uprising against the Russian Empire, as subjecting “the children’s world… to terrible devastation.” Less commonly known is how the waves of hauntingly familiar mass deportations of Polish children shape the nation’s staunch support of Ukraine. Poland, for example, has frequently pushed the Western military alliance to provide more, better and faster weapons to Ukraine. The durability of this strategy also provides fresh insight into the staunch support of Ukraine’s neighbors who suffered under similar policies. With scores of deported Ukrainian children and adults sent to camps in Russia’s poorest regions, patterns of Soviet forcible worker resettlement campaigns raise concerns of willful, coordinated labor trafficking. Russia’s workforce challenges are profound, with many thousands of military casualties and out-migration. Russia’s pronounced demographic crisis has been well-known for years, and fears abound that children are viewed by the Kremlin as another resource to loot. Moscow has regularly used mass trafficking of citizens, including minors, over two centuries: to punish resisters, weaken community ties that could threaten the state and solve their own demographic problems. While the forced deportations have stunned global observers, from a historical perspective Russia’s policy against Ukrainian civilians is terribly logical and consistent. These callous crimes against children have resulted in the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants for Russia’s so-called “Children’s Rights” Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova and President Vladimir Putin – only the third-serving president in history to be issued one. Opinion: A chilling insight into life for deported Ukrainian children Yana with niece Albina Shapoval, 11, and nephew Danilo Shapoval, 9. Over the course of the war, at least 20,000 minors have been forcibly transferred from their families in Ukraine to Russia or Russian-occupied territories, according to Ukrainian officials. Yet again, it seems Moscow is using stolen children to punish opposition to their violent control. The Russian soldier stands triumphantly on the bloody remains of a Ukrainian man, presumably the child’s father. In the summer of 2022, a disturbing mural appeared in occupied Mariupol depicting a Russian soldier holding a small, bewildered Ukrainian child draped in a Russian flag. Russia’s ‘terribly consistent’ crimes against children Few though, are more devastating than the mass trafficking of children. Over the course of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, eerily similar historical parallels have often emerged. Writing in 1914, historian Marian Dubiecki recounted Moscow’s deportation of Polish children following the 18 th century Kościuszko Uprising. He noted that Russian officers “did not hesitate to take loot for themselves even from children’s toys.” Sadly, bizarre images like this aren’t unique to Russia’s 2022 invasion. In a surreal twist, footage appeared of one hulking soldier crowded into a child-sized amusement park train, driving it away in the midst of a Russian convoy. The troops seized Ukrainian businesses, looted priceless art and even loaded toilets onto their tanks.
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