The European Union will organize a conference in partnership with Warsaw and Kyiv with the aim of establishing the location of children abducted from Ukraine by Russia and returning them to their country, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on Thursday. at the summit in Brussels, reports AFP.

“This is a terrible reminder of the darkest times in our history, of the deportations of children that take place there. It is a war crime,” said a German official after the summit in Brussels.

“We know that 16,200 children were deported, only 300 returned,” she continued at the press conference.

She added that “these criminal actions fully justify the arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court” on March 17 against Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for the “illegal deportation of Ukrainian children during the Russian invasion.”

“In partnership with the Ukrainians, Prime Minister (of Poland) Mateusz Morawiecki and I launched an initiative to repatriate these children kidnapped by Russia. For this, we will organize a conference (…) we want to exert international pressure so that all possible measures are taken to find these children,” she said at the press conference.

She did not provide details about the date and place of this event.

According to her, the goal is to “help the UN bodies and relevant international organizations to get more complete information” about the deported children. “This includes children who were adopted or transferred to Russian foster families,” she said.

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