In the wake of the aggression against Ukraine by the Russian Federation, there has been information concerning forced transfers of Ukrainian civilian citizens to the Russian Federation or Ukrainian territories under the control of the Russian army, mainly in the Donbass region.
The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, has himself stated that about half a million of Ukrainian citizens have been transferred by force by the Russian authorities to those areas. The Russian Federation talks about the figure of approximately one million. Many of these forcefully displaced persons are children, possibly up to one third. According to several different sources, a significant number of those Ukrainian civilian citizens where kidnaped, tortured and taken to centres of selection where their personal data, mobile phones, ID cards and passports were taken. Nobody knows how this personal data will be used by the Russian Federation. This is a source of great concern. Some say that the intention of the Russian Federation’s authorities could be the naturalisation by force of Ukrainian citizens.
Therefore, the Parliamentary Assembly should analyse the exact situation in which those forcefully displaced or transferred persons find themselves, who they are and what are their perspectives in the future with a view to ensuring that international humanitarian law and international human rights standards are respected in their regard.