US criticizes Russia for trafficking Ukrainian citizens

This is stated in the US State Department's 2023 Trafficking in Persons report, Reuters writes.

This year, Russia remained on the list of 'state sponsors' of human trafficking. It is one of the countries with the worst ways of dealing with this problem. The section on the country contains more criticism than last year. It mentions the forced transfer of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia, which is the subject of prosecution by the International Criminal Court against Russian officials, including dictator Vladimir Putin.

“There was a government policy or pattern of trafficking of Ukrainian citizens and North Korean workers,” the document says. 

In addition, there are reports that Russian officials have coerced, deceived or forced adult foreign citizens to participate in Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine.

This year's report credits Russia with facilitating the return of Russian children from Syria, some of whom may have been victims of human trafficking, but it mentions fewer positive aspects than last year's report.

Russia is ranked in Tier 3, which groups the largest offenders in the field of human trafficking (it was there last year). Instead, this year, Algeria, Chad, Djibouti, and Equatorial Guinea were downgraded to Tier 3. And Malaysia and Vietnam were upgraded, because although they did not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking, they made significant efforts to do so, the report says.

Deportation of Ukrainian children by Russia

Since February 24, 2022, the country has been massively deporting Ukrainian children from the occupied territories. They are being taken to the occupied Crimea, Russia, or Belarus, allegedly for rehabilitation or to rest in camps. Currently, more than 19,300 children have been illegally deported from Ukraine by Russians. This was stated by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a joint briefing in Rome with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on May 13.

In March, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and Russian Children's Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova for the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children.

On May 29, Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, spoke at an informal meeting of the UN Security Council on the abduction of children from the occupied Ukrainian territories by Russia. The ombudsman said that Russia deliberately changes legislation to make it impossible for Ukrainian children to return home and uses, among other things, the forced change of their citizenship to Russian. Lubinets also noted that Russia does not provide any data on Ukrainian deported children, and it is not even known where they are and in what conditions. 

He later added that Russians use child labor and militarize Ukrainian children in the temporarily occupied territories.

Instead, on June 8, a US Senate committee supported a draft resolution condemning the abduction of Ukrainian children to Russia and calling Moscow's actions genocide.

The Center for National Resistance reported that on June 8, 150 children from Starobilsk district of the Luhansk region were illegally taken to the Lesnoy and Sosenka recreation centers in the Prykuban district of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic of the Russian Federation. Since June, these institutions have been waiting for 750 children from the temporarily occupied territory of Luhansk Oblast.