December 4, 2024
I shall now make a statement in my capacity as the representative of the United States.
I want to thank UNICEF Executive Director Russell and our civil society briefers, Mr. Raymond and Ms. Rashevska, for their important and sobering briefings on Ukraine’s children.
Colleagues, so often, when we discuss devastating conflicts, like Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, we speak in broad strokes. We try to convey the horrors of war through numbers: the number of missiles, the numbers of dead and injured, the numbers displaced and without electricity.
But the victims of war – of all wars – are not just numbers. They are people with names and stories, hopes and dreams.
Like Milena, the young girl I met during my visit to Ukraine two years ago, who told me all she wanted to do was go back to school and see her best friend again. Her eyes beamed with hope. And I think of her all the time. I think of all of the young children who have been displaced and forcibly deported. I think of all those whose lives were cut tragically short.
Like Polina, a 10-year-old girl, one of the first children killed in Russia’s full-scale invasion. She and her parents were shot dead while trying to flee to safety.
Alisa, a seven-year-old from Sumy Oblast, killed, alongside her grandfather, when a Russian cluster bomb struck a school.
Or Serhii, a two-day old baby, killed by a Russian rocket attack as he lay in the maternity ward next to his mother. Serhii was small, even for a newborn. Just under six pounds, less than 20 inches long. He did not live long enough to receive a birth certificate.
Tragically, I could go on and on and on. The list of young people murdered and maimed by Russian forces is long as is the list of children forcibly deported.
Forcibly deported. What does that mean in layman’s terms? It means Russian forces have stolen children, and sent them to Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine’s sovereign territory or deported them into Russia itself, where all trace of them is often obscured. You heard that from both of our civil society briefers today.
Russia’s forces have assigned these Ukrainian children new Russian names, Russian passports, and subjected them to Russian “military-patriotic” indoctrination programs. They have punished children for speaking Ukrainian, lied to them about the fates of their families and communities, and forced them into adoptions with Russian families.
In other words, Russia has sought to systematically erase these children’s identities.
It is no wonder the country appears in the Secretary-General’s annual report on Children and Armed Conflict for violations against children committed by its officials, including killing and maiming children and attacking schools and hospitals.
Moscow’s horrors are also laid out in the report written by Mr. Raymond and others at the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab. We heard about that directly from Mr. Raymond today. And I have a copy of the report right here in front of me. It is very detailed. It is devastating. It is damning. And I urge you all to read it for yourselves.
As we heard, it underscores, in excruciating detail, the atrocities orchestrated and overseen by the highest levels of the Russian government. By the man at the top: President Putin. And by Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s so-called Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights, as well as and many others.
Make no mistake: Russian officials and Russian forces have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.
And thus far, Russia has remained intransigent and unrepentant, frustrating international efforts – and I heard Kateryna today, say she is very frustrated – including those required under the Geneva Conventions, to identify, locate, and reunify missing children with their families and legal guardians.
As a result, only a heartbreakingly small number of these children have returned home to Ukraine.
For our part, the United States, together with partners around the world, has pursued measures to hold Russian officials to account.
In March of this year, we joined the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children.
We continue to support Ukraine’s national authorities, international efforts, and civil society in pushing for the safe return of Ukrainian children and for accountability.
And today, I can announce the U.S. Department of State is pursuing visa restrictions for five additional Russia-backed or Russia-installed officials for their involvement in human rights abuses of Ukrainian children in connection with their forced deportation, transfer, and confinement.
Colleagues, as I have said many times, children never start wars, but they are always victims of war. Robbed of the chance to go to school. Robbed of the certainty their home will be there when they return. Robbed of warmth in the winter months. Robbed of freedom. Robbed of life.
I leave you with the words of Milana, an 11-year-old from central Ukraine. This is a portion of a heart-wrenching poem she shared with the world:
I want to make a flower wreath,
To chase the fields of grass and wheat.
To gaze at stars, in skies so vast.
Forget these years of pain amassed.
I want to forget the nights full of fears,
Get rid of the sorrow, to calm our tears.
I need to be patient, come what may,
And now, with hope, I will softly pray.
Colleagues, for Milana, and for all of Ukraine’s children, we must call for the Kremlin to end its war of conquest, immediately and to withdraw from Ukraine’s sovereign territory within its internationally recognized borders.
History has shown appeasing aggression only begets more aggression. We saw it in Georgia in 2008. We saw it in Crimea in 2014. We saw it in Eastern Ukraine, in the months leading up to the full-scale invasion. And we risk seeing it again, now.
If the Kremlin achieves its war aims and changes Ukraine’s borders by force or ends Ukraine’s existence as a sovereign and independent country, Russia will continue its siege elsewhere and more people, more children, will suffer.
We must not allow that to happen.
And so, the United States will continue to stand with Ukraine, as it bravely defends its freedom. We will continue to push for a just peace in line with the UN Charter. And we will continue to call on Russia to return all Ukrainian children to their homes, and allow others to live in warmth and peace.
Thank you.