The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for V. Putin on charges of war crimes in the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children.
Last spring, Russian forces took 17-year-old Bohdan Yermokhin from Mariupol to Russia and, like an unknown number of other Ukrainian children, placed him with a Russian foster family.
Earlier this year, Moscow said he tried to flee back to Ukraine but was detained near the Belarusian border.
“Bohdan Yermokhin will soon be in Ukraine!” Ukrainian Rights Commissioner Dmytro Lubinets wrote on the social network on Friday.
“I officially confirm that we have agreed on Bohdan’s return to Ukraine and his reunification with his sister,” he added.
The news comes after his lawyers told Ukrainian media this week that Yermokhin, who will soon turn 18, has already been drafted into the military in Russia.
Moscow confirmed that B. Yermokhin will be returned to Ukraine.
Russian Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, who is also subject to an arrest warrant by the ICC over the forced transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia, said on Friday that the teenager would leave Russia via a third country to meet a relative.
“The Russian and Ukrainian sides have agreed on a meeting between Bohdan and his sister in a third country on his birthday,” she said on social media, but did not specify where the meeting would take place.
Lvova-Belova has said several times this year that Yermokhin wanted to stay in Russia and that Ukrainian officials persuaded him to return.
But on Friday, she said that Mr. Yermokhin had changed his mind.
She also said that it was normal that he was drafted into the army.
“All Russian citizens of this age receive such messages,” she said.
Ukraine did not specify when B. Yermokhin will be returned to Ukraine.
Russia is believed to have taken thousands of Ukrainian children to its territory since the beginning of the war.
Last month, Russia said it would return four Ukrainian children to their relatives through Qatar’s mediation.
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2024-09-23 15:11:10
