Ukraine's Foreign Ministry is claiming that more than 2,300 children have been forcibly deported from eastern territories occupied by Russian forces since the start of its invasion and transported them to Russia proper.
"According to information received, on March 19, the Russian occupation forces illegally deported 2,389 children who were in the occupied districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions to the territory of the Russian Federation," said the ministry on its Facebook page.
The Foreign Ministry has called for international authorities to declare the movement as an "abduction," since it says the children were moved without their parents. Local law enforcement reportedly was investigating.
The report of the children's cases comes as the mayor of the port city of Mariupol, Vadym Boichenko, posted on his Telegram social media account that Russian forces have forcibly removed people from a sports club in the Levoberezhny neighborhood that was being used as a bomb shelter and transported them to Russia.
He did not say how many people.
"It's known that the captured people were taken to 'filtration camps' where the occupier would check their phones and documents," a statement from the local government read. "After the check, some of the people were sent to the far-flung cities in Russia. The fate of others is unknown."
Mariupol, a city of about 440,000, has been surrounded by Russian forces for more than two weeks. More than 80% of its civilian infrastructure reportedly has been destroyed.
Ukraine reportedly has chosen not to place troops in Mariupol, removing the necessity for shelling by enemy troops.
An adviser to the Boichenko, Petro Andushenko, additionally claimed in a Facebook post that Ukrainians have been moved to another city in other occupied territories as well as Russian cities.
"They took them to Novoazovsk," he wrote. "They took their Ukrainian passports and were sent to Taganrog and from there taken to different, economically depressed areas of Russia. Our people are given documents that state that they have to stay where they were shipped and work as directed for the next two years."
On Feb. 21, local prosecutor Iryna Venediktova claimed that some populations in the East were beginning to get forcefully deported to Russia while some men who were "caught were being used to support mobilization efforts in the "independent republics."
"In fact, Ukrainian people are getting deported, a civilian population that is considered most vulnerable," she wrote in a Facebook post. "Some of them include boarding school students, especially parentless children, and patients with severe mental health issues who have to remain hospitalized. This is not the first time this happened."
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