The International Criminal Court in The Hague has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of unlawful deportation of children from Ukraine. The court stated in 2017 there are reasonable grounds to believe Putin bears individual criminal responsibility for these crimes.

On Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) heard a case concerning 10 Ukrainian children who were forcibly transferred from Crimea after Russia's 2014 annexation and put up for adoption. The Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union (UHHRU), which lodged the case, argues that Russian nationality was imposed on the children and that their enforced disappearance since 2014 amounts to a violation.

Ahead of the hearing, the special envoy of the Council of Europe Secretary General, Thordis Kolbrun Reykfjord Gylfadottir, said it is a reminder that 'we must keep Ukrainian children at the heart of the political agenda'. She emphasized that behind every case is a child whose fate matters and whose whereabouts must be known.

In total, four Ukrainian human rights and journalistic groups accuse Moscow of violating the international Convention on the Rights of the Child, levelling charges including deporting children, illegal adoption and changing children's identities and nationalities. Onysiia Syniuk of the Zmina rights group told Al Jazeera that the change of identity, including first and last names and even dates of birth, makes tracking these children extremely difficult.

Russian officials reject the accusations, claiming that children have not been abducted but are rather rescued from war zones through humanitarian efforts. However, Kyiv has claimed that the overall number of children and teenagers taken from occupied Ukrainian regions is close to 20,000, the majority seized after 2022. After the two-hour hearing, ECHR Judge Lado Chanturia said the court will deliberate on the admissibility and merits of the case and did not specify a potential date for a ruling.

Source: www.aljazeera.com