Ukraine pleading with SA

Abducted kids forced into military training to be soldiers, claims official.

- Eric Naki

Ukrainian authorities want the South African government and the ANC to expedite their engagement with Russia to release an estimated 20,000 Ukrainian children.

This was revealed by Kateryna Rashevska, legal expert at the Ukrainian nongovernmental organisation Regional Centre for Human Rights, in an interview with The Citizen during her week-long visit to South Africa.

She alleged Russia had abducted and forced some of the children into military training to become soldiers to fight against Ukraine in the ongoing war.

Rashevska said the boys and girls, who are between two months and 17 years old, were first taken from Crimea in 2014 and from other areas by Russia during the current war that began in February 2022.

The children were allegedly moved and put on a programme for adoption by Russian citizens, their identities and citizenships allegedly changed to Russian and some sent to military camps and trained as soldiers.

"Many of these children who were taken in 2014 are now Russian teenagers and they don't know about their origin and they don't understand they are Ukrainian children because they have been adopted and raised as Russian children," she said.

Rashevska was in the country to lobby President Cyril Ramaphosa, Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Ronald Lamola and the ANC to use their influence and proximity to Russia and talk them into releasing the children.