The Netherlands will donate DNA test kits to Ukraine in order to aid the country in identifying children kidnapped by Russia, outgoing Foreign Minister Hanke Bruins Slot (CDA/EPP) announced on Thursday.
Bruins Slot met up with Ukrainian Human Rights Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets and children’s rights advisor Darya Herasymchuk in The Hague in order to discuss the ongoing kidnappings of Ukrainian children perpetrated by the Kremlin.
They were accompanied by several Ukrainian children who had been kidnapped by Russia and subsequently liberated.
“Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has already abducted thousands of Ukrainian children. This deliberate policy by Russia is unprecedentedly cruel and disrupts families,” Bruins Slot stated during the meeting.
The donation is part of a wider DNA reunification project, which was started to help Ukraine build up a DNA database in order to facilitate the identification and subsequent reunification of kidnapped children with their families.
The project also seeks to aid Ukraine in gathering evidence for the kidnappings as the country continues to document and investigate war crimes committed by Russia. It receives support in this endeavour from the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC), which opened its Kyiv office on Thursday.
The court had previously filed arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova, the mastermind behind the mass deportations.
The Dutch had already contributed to the ICC’s investigations of war crimes committed in Ukraine last year by sending a team of forensic analysts to the country in order to gather information.
(Benedikt Stöckl | Euractiv.com)
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Source: euractiv.com
