Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Nov. 21st, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting No. 39 of the House of Commons Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

For members in the room who wish to speak, please raise your hand. For members on Zoom, please use the “raise hand” function. The clerk and I will manage the speaking order as best we can, and we appreciate your patience and understanding in this regard.

Before I begin, I want to note that the subject of the first part of today's meeting is the unlawful transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia. Some of the discussions may be difficult for the viewers, the members and the staff of the subcommittee. If you feel distressed or if you need help, please consult the clerk for information on the support services available through the House of Commons administration.

Now, please join me in welcoming the first witness appearing this morning, Mr. Andriy Kostin, prosecutor general of Ukraine.

Mr. Kostin, welcome to Canada, and welcome to this subcommittee on human rights. Thank you for agreeing to appear today. You will have a maximum of five minutes for your remarks, after which we will move into questions with members of the subcommittee. I will let you know when you have one minute left.

Mr. Kostin, the floor is yours for five minutes. Please, go ahead.

[Andriy Kostin, Prosecutor General, Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine]

Good morning, Chair El-Khoury and distinguished members of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights.

Thank you very much for this opportunity to appear before you today and to unmask the war crimes and other atrocities that Russia is committing against Ukrainian children. We're equally glad for being given an opportunity to submit a brief paper on that matter.

At the outset, I wish to convey my sincere gratefulness to Canada, its government and people, for your unwavering and continuous support of Ukraine. The issue of our bilateral co-operation and partnership was widely discussed at yesterday's event in Toronto entitled “United for Justice Conference: War Crimes against Ukrainian Children”. The event hosted prominent Canadian and international experts, and Ministers Joly and Virani.

Sadly, as we speak, Russia continues to commit heinous acts as a distinct feature of Russian military and political doctrine and a modus operandi of the Russian armed forces and their proxies. The forced deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children is one of the atrocious consequences of Russia's aggression—an ill-fated practice implemented from the early days of the occupation of parts of Ukrainian territories in 2014.

What does Russia do? It forcibly displaces, completely removes and separates children from their parents, immediate family and the settings in which they have initially been reared.

The top political leadership of the Russian Federation is the mastermind of this large-scale policy implemented under the pretext of security and health concerns or for vacation purposes. In Russia, Ukrainian children are stripped of their Ukrainian citizenship and put up for adoption with Russian families via online advertised adoption websites. It's not a mere allegation but an openly publicized practice that is supported and even co-perpetrated by the Russian officials who are supposed to protect children's rights and freedoms.

The first two arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court for President Putin and the so-called child commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, for the forced deportation of children are testaments of such practices.

Imagine children, mere toddlers, who become a trump card in the hands of Russia, not knowing or remembering their true identity, whereabouts, families or relatives. We're talking about thousands of children being taken to Russia in a specific manner.

Children in occupied territories are gathered and transferred to assigned centres under the pretext of evacuation for unsubstantiated security reasons. Within days, children are moved via auto or rail transit to border regions of the Russian Federation where they are distributed to child care institutions in various regions of the Russian Federation. Relevant Russian authorities assign a guardian from among the employees of the administration of the child care institutions in order to launch the adoption procedures along with the change of citizenship and the transfer of deported children to Russian families.

While placed in the centres in the occupied territories, border regions of Russia or the child care institutions in Russia, Ukrainian children have restricted freedom of movement, meaning they are unable to leave the place, and they have a lack of contact with family members or relatives. Another practice relates to the transfer of Ukrainian children to occupied Crimea or various regions of the Russian Federation in the so-called recreation camps, some as far as Siberia and the east Pacific coast. Many facilities refuse to release them, citing invented so-called safety concerns.

As of today, we have information about more than 19,000 Ukrainian children being forcibly transferred to temporarily occupied territories and deported to Russia as we continue to trace and gather information about each and every child. So far only 387 children have been returned.

Apart from the ICC, this practice has been labelled and recognized as a war crime by the United Nations inquiry commission for Ukraine, the OSCE fact-finding mission and regional organizations like the Council of Europe.

Unfortunately, the crimes against Ukrainian children are neither random nor spontaneous. They are part of the Kremlin's widespread and systematic policy against the Ukrainian civilian population. Therefore, in our understanding, this practice constitutes a crime against humanity and could even amount to the crime of genocide through the forcible transfer of children. Russia does not stop with deportation and adoption processes. The grown-up Ukrainian children are forced to undergo so-called re-education into Russian. For teenage boys, this often includes militarization programs.

Last year a U.S. State Department-supported program depicted a network of 43 re-education camps in the Conflict Observatory report. Children are indoctrinated into the Kremlin's vision of nation, culture, history and society. It is part of Russia's planned policy aimed at smearing Ukrainian identity by robbing us of our children. A new four-day-old report has disclosed the involvement of the Government of Belarus in over 2,400 deported Ukrainian children undergoing political and military training in Dubrava and 12 other facilities in Belarus.

This is not new. Since 2014 the Russification policy has been heavily implemented in occupied territories through so-called re-education programs. Imagine the grotesque sight of children dressed in military-type uniforms glorifying the war through a Kremlin-distorted view of historical facts.

As the prosecutor general of Ukraine, my task is to secure full accountability for these heinous crimes on a national level while also fostering extensive use of international justice mechanisms. As the primary duty-bearer, we extensively investigate international crimes against children, including forced deportation and transfer cases. We're grateful to our partners for their unwavering support to the prosecution. We equally commend the office of the prosecutor of the ICC for their rigorous efforts, determination and steadfast progress in investigating.

More needs to be done by all of us. First, we need to implement effective modalities to counter this ill-fated practice. One such effort would be to include individuals and entities involved in or associated with the forced transfer and deportation of Ukrainian children into the sanctions regime.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Excuse me. We have a problem with translation.

All right. You can continue now.

[Andriy Kostin]

Second, we need to secure the safe and unimpeded return of Ukrainian children to their families, guardians and homes through meaningful and mobilized assistance. We hope to see Canada at the forefront of this initiative as co-leader of point four of Ukraine's peace formula.

Third, we need to continue the effective investigation and prosecution of each and every individual perpetrator, denying them any opportunity for safe haven.

We're happy to see Canada standing with us and exploring such avenues in the name of Ukrainian children.

Thank you for your attention.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you, Mr. Kostin. Thank you for your good and excellent comments.

We'll now go to questions from the members of the committee. Every member will have seven minutes to speak.

I would like to start by inviting Mr. Genuis to speak.

Mr. Genuis, you have the floor for seven minutes.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Prosecutor General Kostin, for being with our committee today. I think you and all of us will have seen the announcement, which I think was yesterday, from Minister Joly about a network on this. I think it speaks to the important cross-party work that's been done at this committee and in general on these horrific human rights abuses that are happening in Ukraine.

Of course, our primary focus today is on the issue of the abduction of children, but I did want to invite you to share with the committee some other issues on atrocities that have been committed by Russian invaders. We've heard reports of systematic sexual violence as well; of torture being used routinely; of even minors being victims of sexual violence and torture; and of horrific contexts, frankly, in which this has happened, with family members being forced to watch and things like that.

I wonder if you can share with us an update on both the torture and the sexual violence being used by the occupying regime.

[Andriy Kostin]

Thank you for your question.

As you rightly mentioned, Russia is committing all types of existing war crimes against Ukraine and Ukrainians. Conflict-related sexual violence is one of the most brutal war crimes committed by Russia. This is not an incidental case. These are not cases related to a specific military unit that, as we say, had gone crazy. We have seen it as a pattern on the occupied territories.

We had the first findings in the first months of the war and after that all the world saw the atrocities committed in Bucha and in other cities near Kyiv and the mass atrocities committed by Russians there. That was in February and March last year. Then after the liberation of the Kharkiv region, we saw the same crimes committed by other military units and in later months of the ongoing war and occupation. After we liberated Kherson in November we saw the same types of crimes committed there, so it means that committing crimes against civilians, including children, is a policy of persecution of Ukrainians that is supported at a very high level of military and political leadership in Russia.

We are investigating these chains of command. Coming back to conflict-related sexual violence, at the moment we are investigating 252 acts of sexual violence in the time of war, including those involving 151 women as victims of sexual violence, 95 men and 13 children. We have already identified 37 suspects. We have indicted 22 of them in Ukrainian courts, in my office, and we have already two persons convicted by Ukrainian courts for committing sexual violence against Ukrainian victims.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you for sharing that very chilling information with us.

I just want to follow up on the issue of the chain of command as it relates to these atrocities on the Russian side. What kind of evidence are you finding of coordination and of direction? Do you think it's a matter of the higher-ups tolerating and creating a permissive environment for this abuse, or do you think there is clear direction, the intentional telling of Russian soldiers to commit these kinds of crimes?

[Andriy Kostin]

We have evidence of both, but if we look at the mapping of crimes committed on the occupied territories against civilians, we understand that once again there is a systematic policy of persecution, because the crimes committed against civilians during occupation mostly were aimed at breaking the will of Ukrainian people. These crimes were committed to show others, to threaten them and to keep them silent and, as we say, to put them on their knees.

That's why the commission of such crimes is so, I would say, systematic, and we have a diversity of crimes committed against the civilian population.

I can give several examples. We work with survivors in the region of Bucha, for example. During the occupation, in one case there was a father walking down the street with his teenage son to get humanitarian aid from the city council where volunteers had gathered it. They were stopped by two Russian servicemen and were put on the ground. The father was killed intentionally in the presence of his son. The servicemen also fired shots around the son who was lying there, just to threaten him with being killed.

In a different case in the same place, they entered a private building where a family—wife, husband and her father—were living. They tried to convince these people that they came, for instance, to “liberate” them, and when Ukrainians, our people, started to say they didn't need any liberation and to just go away and leave them alone, they killed the man, the husband, in the presence of his wife. Then twice they pointed a gun at her and imitated killing her. Only after her father asked them to leave them alone did they escape from this building. They waited until Bucha was liberated by the Ukrainian army to come back and to bury the body of her husband.

We have a big variety of such cases. I can tell you about a lot of them, but it's important, as evidence, to point out that in one small town they committed different types of crimes, just to terrorize the local population.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you, Mr. Genuis. Your time is up.

Now I would like to invite Mr. Ehsassi.

Mr. Ehsassi, you have the floor for seven minutes.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Prosecutor General, it's a great honour to have you here. Thank you for being with us.

I've had the opportunity, over the course of the past year and half, to be in Ukraine twice. I've always made an effort to meet with your officials, who, in my opinion, are doing a magnificent job of gathering evidence, cataloguing that evidence and building cases against the Russian troops who are in Ukraine.

I am wondering if you could first tell us, at a very macro level, all of the significant work that your office is doing in cataloguing the criminal activities of Russians in Ukraine.

[Andriy Kostin]

Thank you for the question.

Of course, they are investigating 110,000 war crimes. This is the figure we have fixed on at the moment. We all understand that the real number is much higher, because we have no access to the temporary occupied territories. Coming back to investigate such a great number of war crimes means that we need to organize our work in a proper manner.

For that, we have created a special unit, which is the war crimes department, at the central level. We have trained all of our prosecutors and investigators from two investigative authorities, which are the National Police and the state Security Service. We also created specializations in specific war crimes, so we have a conflict-related sexual violence unit, a special unit that investigates war crimes against children, a special unit that investigates war crimes against the environment and a special unit that investigates cyber-attacks that are committed by Russia as war crimes, which is quite unique in the investigation and prosecution of such crimes. I also created special units of war crime prosecutors in nine regions that are close to the front line or were affected by the temporary occupation. We have passed through the substantial training of all prosecutors and investigators in these regions.

We also created strategic documents. The most important is the strategy for the investigation and prosecution of international crimes for 2023 to 2025, which gives us an opportunity to legally and structurally categorize the war crimes that we are investigating and prosecuting and to prioritize them, because it is impossible to do everything at one moment. Now we have a specific document that is a signal to all prosecutors and investigators for how we prioritize cases. Of course, cases where civilians were killed, wounded, raped, ill-treated, humiliated or illegally detained and, of course, all cases where children are affected as victims and survivors are our priority.

In order to mitigate the issues of the workload, we also transfer some cases from one region to another region in Ukraine because it has more possibilities.

In addition to working with all war crimes and in addition to these special units, we also have two groups of prosecutors who investigate the crimes of aggression—the leadership crimes, which preceded the commission of all other war crimes—and crimes of genocide. This is more our mapping on the national level.

The other layer of our web of accountability, as we call it, is our work with the international judicial mechanisms. First and foremost, it's our co-operation with the ICC and the team of Karim Khan. You know, the ICC has launched—not only opened but really launched—its field office in Kyiv. It's the biggest field office outside of The Hague in the history of the ICC. It's about the sustainability of our co-operation with the ICC.

Our prosecutors are working on a daily basis with the ICC. We've created task forces. We also have priorities in our investigations. I cannot give you details for the sake of the independence of the investigations. However, our work is very structured with the ICC.

We also work with all existing international mechanisms, like the UN inquiry commission, the OSCE fact-finding missions and all other UN mechanisms on preventing torture and combatting sexual violence. We have great support. The biggest issue is our full transparency. We are ready to co-operate. We are ready to share all evidence and information. This is a very strong position of our government: to be open to sharing all existing information.

The third layer is our co-operation with our international partners. There are more than 20 countries that opened national investigations with regard to war crimes committed in Ukraine, including Canada. We have created a joint investigation team with countries that are close to Ukraine and that are where a lot of refugees are located. These refugees can deliver evidence statements, video footage and other evidence of the war crimes that they have been victims or witnesses of. Our joint investigation team comprises Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Slovakia and Romania. It simplifies the exchange of evidence.

We also, as I mentioned, coordinate the efforts of independent investigations of other countries. On that, for the level of the Eurojust in The Hague, we have created a specific, unique instrument that has been fully operational since November. It's called CICED, the core international crimes evidence database.

Why we did it, together with the help of the Euro commission, was because millions of Ukrainians are located in different countries. They can approach police and prosecutors in these countries and give statements and give evidence. In order for this evidence not to be lost as one piece of a big case, we created a database where national investigative authorities of other countries can include information about this evidence. We have an agreement among all of us that we will exchange this evidence in a very speedy manner.

We are expecting the first indictments of Russian perpetrators by other jurisdictions. This will be a very important signal to Russia that there will be no safe havens, because national investigations are ongoing and we're sharing information from our side with the other national investigation authorities.

I'm ready also to transfer cases from Ukraine where, for instance, nationals of the other countries were affected by the aggressive war of Russia. To transfer cases it will help us of course. It will reduce our workload a little bit, but once again it will be a very important signal that the world is standing with us to pursue justice for all victims and survivors of this war. Of course, the last element of our accountability web is the creation of a special tribunal for the crime of aggression.

We are grateful to Canada for both supporting the core group of countries that are now preparing the legal modalities of such a tribunal, as well as supporting the ICC, which is very important. I always say, if you're helping the ICC, you're helping Ukraine.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you, Mr. Ehsassi. Your time is up.

I now invite Mr. Brunelle‑Duceppe to take the floor for seven minutes.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Prosecutor General, welcome to the subcommittee.

Based on your experience and your knowledge of the file, can you tell us whether independent organizations have access to these children to check what happens after they have been transferred to Russia? Are these children completely out of reach?

[Andriy Kostin]

I'm sorry, but that was not properly translated. Could you kindly repeat that?

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Can independent organizations check what happens to the children when they are transferred to Russia? Do they have access to those children when they are on Russian soil?

[Andriy Kostin]

This is actually a big problem, because Russia does not co-operate with international organizations and with international mechanisms, even while being part of these international organizations and mechanisms. I always say that Russia uses any possibility in its favour—all existing international mechanisms, like the right to veto in the Security Council of the UN. However, Russia does not co-operate with the other institutions, in accordance with international law, where Russia is a part of them and where it has specific obligations.

We use different avenues to try to verify this information. One of the avenues is the International Committee of the Red Cross. This is difficult work and they have.... I would not say “access”, but they have partial communication with Russian authorities. From time to time Russia can verify some information, even though we are not sure if this information, if verified by Russia, is actual information. This is because, coming back to the children and the detention centres and so-called camps where they are located, Russia is moving these children from time to time among different camps. Even if they give this information it may not be valid.

However, in general Russia does not co-operate with international mechanisms and institutions, which really creates a problem.

For this purpose, we co-operate with different NGOs and civil society organizations that are both national—I mean national Ukrainian—and international, because they use OSCE resources in order to try to find out where our children are located. If we have this information, then of course we raise the awareness on the world level and then, in some cases, Russia starts to return our children back home.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you. That is exactly why I asked you that question. That is pretty major.

In your presentation, you talked about the change in children's behaviour when they return to their families.

Children have came here with a great deal of courage to testify before us at the subcommittee.

How systematic is this change in behaviour among children who have been transferred to Russia and who end up returning to their families in Ukraine?

[Andriy Kostin]

This is a sensitive issue. I cannot give you the full picture of all the children who were returned back home. We are treating them very sensitively and, for the matter of justice, we also enhanced our communication with children. We changed our approaches and techniques. We are usually limited to one interrogation or one communication with the children, because we can't retraumatize them. It happened that it would be two times, but we usually instruct our investigators and prosecutors to limit it to one investigation.

We have special green rooms that are called Barnahus, where children, especially very young children, communicate with psychologists. The prosecutor is in another room supervising this, so they do not meet with a prosecutor. Our legislation, which has improved, made it possible.

As a prosecutor general, we don't try to go into such deep detail in each and every case to find out how the perception of Ukrainian children who returned back home has changed. If the child is ready to talk about this, we accept this information, but it's impossible to press them by trying to ask. It's mostly what children are ready to tell us—this we fix. This is very important because, with the changing of this approach, we took standards from the International Criminal Court to apply to our work with children. These standards are very high.

If you allow me, I will finish.

It's very important for children to take part in pursuing justice and to be at the table. If they're ready, their voices as victims and witnesses of war crimes are extremely important. We engage them to speak, and we use specific techniques for them to speak freely. This is very important. The children will be at the table of justice at all times with all other institutions for their voices to be heard.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you.

How much evidence do you have that the Wagner Group is involved, or has been involved, in the transfer of these children? Is there any evidence?

[Andriy Kostin]

We need to check this information, because the Wagner Group mainly commits two types of illegal activity. One is that they fight as a part of the Russian armed forces. Second, they were among those who were the most brutal in terrorizing the civilian population.

We can check this information for the purpose of giving you exact answers and provide you with a written statement, if you wish.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

You talked about people who are at the top of the pyramid and are involved in transfers. However, there are also officials at the federal, regional and even local levels who may not be sanctioned at the moment, either by the Americans or by other countries.

How important would it be to standardize the sanctions, not only for senior officials but also for small local officials? Could this help us fight the scourge of the transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia?

[Andriy Kostin]

This is very important. We are very supportive of using this instrument while we are collecting enough evidence to indict them. During this time, we share this information to sanction them, because sanctioning them on the medium level should deter others from committing these crimes.

What Russia did is that they adopted specific legislation, and many of these people think that they're just executing the order. They don't understand that they are committing war crimes. Sanctioning them and making their lives more difficult for committing these crimes, prior to our getting enough evidence so that we can indict them in a criminal case, is very important to deter the commission of such crimes in the future.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Now I would like to invite Mr. Angus to take the floor for seven minutes, please.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you so much, Chair.

Thank you so much, Prosecutor General Kostin, for being here.

This is a very difficult conversation. We have seen a pattern of war crimes committed by Russia, with the targeting of Ukrainian cultural symbols and mass sexual violence in the battlefield areas like Kharkiv and Kherson. We've seen torture. We've seen the murder of civilians. However, this question of forcibly taking the children moves us into a whole other realm, because it is about the destroying of families and the destroying of identity.

One of the legal definitions of genocide is the forceful taking of children. Just to have it on the record here for the Canadian people, you've identified 19,000 forced deportations. You've identified children who were being put up for adoption illegally. You've stated that teenagers were being forced into military training.

How systematic is this? What does this pattern tell us about Russia's attempt to destroy Ukrainian identity and Ukrainian families?