Thank you to everyone. I hope I will have more time during the question-and-answer session with my colleague Andrii. We will share as much information with you as possible.
Dear members of the subcommittee and dear participants, since February 24, 2022, when Russia started its full-scale invasion, numerous violations of fundamental human rights and devastating crimes have been committed by the Russian army and politicians against the civilian population of Ukraine.
The most fearful impact of such offences is related to the most vulnerable group of the Ukrainian population—children. Ukrainian children are suffering from all kinds of crimes, which were identified by UN Security Council resolutions as grave and indefensible offences against children during the international armed conflict.
More than 510 children are officially reported as killed and more than 1,141 as wounded as a result of Russian attacks. However, the real numbers are suggested to be much higher, considering that those killed and injured are in currently occupied territories, where it is impossible to obtain exact information.
Numerous children have suffered different forms of sexual violence from Russian soldiers, with grave psychological and physical consequences. It is reported that 19,546 children have been forcibly transferred to the territory of the Russian Federation and the occupied territories of Ukraine and forcibly integrated into a Russian environment through adoption, placement into an educational institution, and the automatic obtaining of citizenship without any realistic chance of returning to Ukraine and being reunited with their families. After 20 months of Russian aggression, Ukrainian authorities have brought back to Ukraine only 300 of such children.
Indiscriminate air strikes by the Russian Federation resulted in almost 4,000 facilities and institutions for children being damaged or completely destroyed. These actions by the Russian Federation culminated in the forced deportation of Ukrainian children, their illegal adoption by Russian citizens and their forced participation in re-education, including military patriotic education.
According to the genocide convention, the forcible transfer of children from one human group to another is genocide. As well, direct incitement for such action is a crime in itself. One key international humanitarian law principle underlines that the occupying power should refrain from bringing in irreversible changes that would fundamentally alter the status of characters of occupied territories.
There are reported instances of children being taken by occupying authorities to camps in Crimea, allegedly for safety reasons and allegedly for recreation activities, but they were never returned to the homes of parents here. In the institutions where children were held, they were forced into so-called integration programs aimed at forcing on them the Russian view of what is happening in Ukraine and in the world and also in culture and society.
The Russian Federation began setting the stage for these crimes years before the full-scale aggression against Ukraine in February 2022. This process dates back to at least 2008 and had been marked by increasingly hostile language, laying the groundwork for the rejection of Ukraine's existence as a state, a nation group and a culture. Multiple international bodies, including the UN commission of inquiry on Ukraine, found continued systematic and widespread use of torture and indiscriminate attacks harming civilians, including children.
Among the devastating consequences for children, the commission has committed to investigating the illegal transfer of unaccompanied minors by Russian authorities to the Russian Federation. The commission also highlighted that some of the rhetoric transmitted in Russian state media and other media may constitute incitement to genocide.
These types of public statements also include denials of the existence of the Ukrainian state and of Ukrainians as a separate nation group. There are also statements that promulgate hatred and glorify terrorism against Ukrainians and that represent direct and public incitement to eliminate Ukrainians. This falls under the definition of a criminal act prohibited by the convention, namely incitement to genocide in the form of complete or partial destruction of the Ukrainian nation group.
That's why we want to highlight that transferring Ukrainian children to Russia involves other activities, such as the re-education of these children and the breaking of their identity as Ukrainians. These activities have a direct connection with genocide.
Thank you for your attention.