BRUSSELS — Kyiv’s chief prosecutor chided the United Nations for not speaking out enough regarding Russia’s kidnapping of Ukrainian children.
“If [the] U.N. is silent when Russia kidnapped up to 20,000 Ukrainian children, I don’t understand what’s going on,” Andriy Kostin said Tuesday during a panel debate in Brussels.
Kyiv’s top law official contrasted the U.N.’s efforts to funnel Ukrainian grain to developing countries with what he called inaction over the kidnapping of children in Ukrainian regions under Russian occupation.
“Supplying grain is not only about feeding those who are starving from hunger. Supplying grain is also about big money,” Kostin said at the event hosted by the European Policy Centre, an independent think tank.
He argued that the international community’s weak reaction toward the children’s deportations encouraged Palestinian militant group Hamas to use similar tactics during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Kostin called the kidnapping of Israeli civilians a “repetition of what Russia did in Ukraine.”
While Kostin acknowledged that Russia can still veto decisions by the U.N.’s Security Council, he vented frustration over how the he sees the body’s General Assembly and its top officials failing to take sufficient action against the Kremlin.
“I’m talking about even strong messages or a resolution of the General Assembly. Is it difficult?” he asked.
Since Moscow’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, thousands of Ukrainian children have been deported to Russia and Belarus in an attempt to sever ties with their mother country.
In February this year, the U.N.’s Committee on the Rights of the Child called upon Russia to return the children to their families. Last year, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over the forced transfer of children to Russia.
Kostin, who is a former member of parliament in Ukraine for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s party, is leading efforts to hold Russia accountable for war crimes. He was in Brussels as well to meet the European Union’s Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders and Belgium’s Justice Minister Paul Van Tigchelt.