Russia has stolen 20,000 children from Ukraine. A country without its children is a country without a future
This week, Canadians celebrate the 80th anniversary of D-Day – the day when Canada’s armed forces joined with those of the United Kingdom, the United States and other allies to start the liberation of Western Europe from fascist occupation. Today, my home country of Ukraine is partly under occupation by a new European fascist regime — that of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. And the war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine is one of the most devastating wars — in human and physical destruction — since the Second World War.
For 10 years, as a human rights lawyer, I have been documenting Russian war crimes in Ukraine — for this war did not begin in 2022. It started with the invasion of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk in 2014.
Our team, the Center for Civil Liberties, united with dozens of organizations from across Ukraine to build a national network of documenters. Since the full-scale invasion in 2022 alone, we have recorded more than 72,000 war crimes.
Russia’s troops are destroying residential buildings, churches, schools, museums and hospitals. They are shooting at evacuation corridors. They are torturing people in filtration camps. They are forcibly mobilizing Ukrainians into the Russian army. They have banned the Ukrainian language and culture. They are abducting, robbing, raping and killing throughout the occupied territories in a savagery unimaginable for a modern and developed society.
Russia uses war crimes as a method of warfare — to break people’s resistance and occupy the country with the tool or warcraft I call “immense pain on the civilian population.” We are documenting more than just violations of the Geneva or Hague conventions. We are documenting human pain. Human suffering.