A 16-year-old Ukrainian teenager was forcibly sent to Russia “on vacation” and placed with a family that tried to instill pro-Russian propaganda in him, the representative of the teenager told the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the US House of Representatives. reports CNN.

Last month, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Children’s Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova for an alleged scheme to deport Ukrainian children to Russia.

At Wednesday’s hearing, a representative told MPs that 16-year-old Roman, who is an orphan, left his school after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and walked 60 kilometers while allegedly being threatened by Russian soldiers. After he reached his destination — a village in Donetsk region — the Russians were also occupying that village, and Roman was admitted to a local hospital with other children, the official said.

“They announced at that hospital that now he will have another family,” his representative said through an interpreter. “The occupation authorities ignored the fact that he said he wanted his brother or sister to be his legal representatives because he had them there.”

Maria Lvova-Belova personally visited the novel

The representative said he was then sent to another hospital in Donetsk, which issued a new birth certificate from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, and then sent to Russia “on vacation.” There, Romana, together with other Ukrainian children, visited Lviv-Belov, who told them that they would be adopted, to which the children protested. Instead, they were sent to a boarding school, the representative said.

“They finally found a new family for Roman,” the representative said. “They tried to change his mind… They made him watch propaganda programs on television.”

His communication with colleagues was restricted, his movements were tracked via mobile phone and “he was forced to say that he liked his new family and his new life”, she said.

“He was forced to get a passport of the Russian Federation, but he was immediately taken away, saying that they would draw up the adoption documents,” she said.

Roman managed to return to Ukraine with the help of humanitarian organizations, the representative said.

The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, stated that there were 16,000 forced deportations of Ukrainian children, but this number could be higher.

Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova said immediately after the decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) about her arrest for war crimes that this confirms her work “to help the children of our country.”

“It’s wonderful that the international community appreciated this work to help the children of our country: not to leave them in the war zone, to take them out, to create good conditions for them, that we surrounded them with loving, caring people,” she said. RIA informs journalists about this.

Ukraine managed to return some of the children abducted by Russia, but the details of this process are not disclosed.

Daria Gerasymchuk, adviser to the President of Ukraine on children’s rights, reported on April 9 that after returning to Ukraine from Russia, some children complained of beatings and other punishments for refusing to sing the Russian national anthem and mentioned that they were Ukrainians.

As punishment, Ukrainian children were not allowed to go out and were forced to rewrite texts in Russian, she added.