Information remains piecemeal, however Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has confirmed that 52 residents of Hrabovske, a village in Sumy oblast, were seized by the Russian invaders and have been taken by force into Russia. There were around 17 men of conscription age, with the others - women and children. The Russians also took thirteen Ukrainian defenders prisoner, with the latter having been hampered in their ability to defend the village from the Russian attack due to the presence of civilians, who had previously refused to evacuate, although Hrabovske is only about 200 metres from the border with Russia. The events have only further exacerbated frustration over the lack to this day of legislation which would prevent civilians in areas under imminent danger of attack from refusing to be evacuated. Such legislation must, however, provide adequately for those displaced as very many of those abducted had returned to Hrabovske after earlier evacuation because they could not afford to rent somewhere else.
The initial information came only from media reports, however the head of the village Larysa Kremezna has also confirmed that the civilians were abducted. Suspilne has learned from a representative of Ukraine’s Armed Forces that the Russians behind both the military escalation and the illegal abduction of civilians are from the Russian army’s 36th Brigade.
Although reports now suggest that the Russians burst into the village during the night of 20 December, Ukraine’s Human Rights Ombudsman first reported that the Russians had abducted the civilians on 18 December. It was then, Kateryna Klochkova told Suspilne, that she and her husband last heard from his parents who had remained in Hrabovske. There were, however, still civilians in the village on 21 December as a few of them were able to phone their relatives and say that the Russians had taken their phones away, but that some had been given them back for long enough to contact their families. Kateryna’s parents-in-law had not, however, been able to phone. She explains that they had remained in the village as there had been relatively little shelling, and many had, in fact, returned after being evacuated earlier, as they didn’t have the money to pay for rented accommodation, once the initial evacuation money (10 thousand UAH) ran out. Kateryna explains that there had been some villagers who had supported Russia at the beginning of the full-scale invasion. They had packed their bags and moved to Russia, with nobody stopping them, nobody saying a word. You cannot reproach those others who returned, she says. The situation was difficult, and it was still easier to be in their own homes. Yes, the village is on the border “but people still believed that they were under protection.”
President Zelenskyy has said that the Ukrainian Armed Forces were placed in a position where they could not use drones or artillery fire against the invaders because of the likelihood of killing civilians.
All such abductions and forced deportation of civilians to other occupied territory or to Russia is in grave violation of international law, which could not be clearer on this point. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states unequivocally that “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.”
Russia has, however, been demonstrating its contempt for the Geneva Conventions and other international documents since 2014 and will continue to do something until stopped. It began kidnapping children from occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts back in 2014, with abductions and forced deportation carried out on a mass scale from 2022.
This was, doubtless, the reason why the first arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court at the Hague were against Russian leader Vladimir Putin and his so-called ‘commissioner of children’s rights’ Maria Lvova-Belova over alleged war crimes linked with such deportation. On 27 April 2023, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe [PACE] passed a resolution recognizing the kidnapping and deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia as genocide.
The arrest warrants remain in force; countless studies have been carried out, reports written and resolutions condemning Russia’s crimes passed. Almost four years on, a huge number of children remain unaccounted for and Russia has just committed a new brazen abduction and forced deportation.
See also:
Putin signs decree simplifying Russia’s criminal abduction of children from occupied Ukraine
Moscow planned the forced deportation of Ukrainians to Russia even before its full-scale invasion
