Rights expert claims Russia deported kidnapped Ukrainian children to North Korea

At a hearing of the United States Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations, a human rights specialist reported that at least two Ukrainian minors taken by Russian forces are currently being held in North Korea, pointing to a widening aspect of Moscows organized deportation practices as its military cooperation with Pyongyang grows.

Kateryna Rashevska of the Regional Center for Human Rights in Ukraine stated that a twelve year old boy from occupied Donetsk and a sixteen year old girl from occupied Simferopol were transported to the Songdowon camp in North Korea, roughly fifty five hundred miles from their homes, where they were subjected to militarized indoctrination.

According to her testimony, the children were instructed in hostile narratives and introduced to Korean veterans involved in the 1968 attack on the United States Navy vessel Pueblo.

The disclosure comes amid expanding collaboration between Russia and North Korea following Russias full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In the previous year, both countries signed a broad strategic agreement that includes provisions for mutual military support in the event of an external attack.

North Korea has supplied considerable assistance to Russias war effort, including large shipments of munitions and the deployment of an estimated fifteen thousand troops to the Kursk region, according to information from South Koreas National Intelligence Service, which also reported that about two thousand of those deployed have been killed.

Analysts believe that, in return, Russia is providing Pyongyang with advanced military technology, including support related to space systems, reconnaissance satellites and air defense capabilities.

The Regional Center for Human Rights has identified one hundred sixty five facilities involved in the re education and militarization of Ukrainian children across occupied Ukrainian territories, Russia, Belarus and North Korea. Rashevska emphasized that boys as young as seventeen receive draft notices for service in the Russian military, calling the process a strategy aimed at turning Ukrainians against one another.

Data from the Bring Kids Back initiative of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky indicates that nearly twenty thousand Ukrainian children have been taken from areas controlled by Russia since the start of the invasion in February 2022. Fewer than two thousand have been successfully returned.

In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for the Russian president and the Russian commissioner for childrens rights in relation to these abductions. On the same day as the Senate hearing, the United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution demanding that Russia guarantee the immediate and safe return of all Ukrainian minors who have been forcibly transferred or deported. The United States supported the resolution along with ninety other member states.

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• Russia sent abducted Ukrainian kids to North Korea, rights expert says