Russia and Ukraine reached an agreement to exchange 48 children displaced by the war, at the end of a meeting between officials from Moscow and kyiv in Qatarreported this Wednesday the Russian Commissioner for Children, Maria Lvova-Belova.
In total “29 children will return to Ukraine and 19 to Russia,” Lvova-Belova told the press, who, like Russian President Vladimir Putin, is the subject of an arrest warrant from 2023 by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for deport thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia.
In March, four Ukrainian children were repatriated from Russia, already with the mediation of Doha, after another similar operation in February involving 11 minors.
In recent months, Qatar has acted as an intermediary in the complex issue of the repatriation of Ukrainian children present in Russian territory since February 2022.
Almost 400 of them were repatriated by the Ukrainian authorities.
In March 2023, the ICC issued an arrest warrant against Putin and Lvova-Belova for their direct involvement in the “deportation” of Ukrainian children to Russia since February 2022.
Russia denies the accusations and says it protects minors from fighting. She also says she is willing to hand them over to their families in Ukraine and they ask for it.
Although Russia is not a member of the ICC, Putin is limited in his international travel by this threat of arrest abroad.
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