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Britain has blocked the UN webcast of an informal security council meeting on Ukraine on Wednesday at which Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights – wanted by the international criminal court on war crimes charges – is due to speak.
The meeting this week will focus on “evacuating children from conflict zone” and Russia said on Tuesday that commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova would feature virtually. Such meetings are not held in the security council chamber and all 15 council members have to agree to allow it to be webcast by the United Nations.
The Hague-based international criminal court (ICC) last month issued an arrest warrant against Russian president Vladimir Putin and Lvova-Belova, accusing them of illegally deporting children from Ukraine and the unlawful transfer of people to Russia from Ukraine since Russia invaded on 24 February 2022.
“She should not be afforded a UN platform to spread disinformation,” a spokesperson for Britain’s UN mission in New York said in a statement. “If she wants to give an account of her actions, she can do so in The Hague.”
Diplomats have said it is rare for a UN webcast to be blocked. However, last month China blocked the UN webcast of a US-convened informal security council meeting on human rights abuses in North Korea.
It comes as Lvova-Belova on Tuesday said she was ready to send children back to Ukraine, if their families requested it.
Ukraine accuses Russia of having “stolen” more than 16,000 children since the start of its offensive more than a year ago. Russia says it is “saving” the children from combat zones and that it has a procedure in place for them to be reunited with their families.
During a press conference Tuesday, Lvova-Belova said she had not been contacted by “any representative of the Ukrainian authorities” about the deported children since the start of the conflict.
She said parents could write her an email to look for the children.
“Write to me ... to find your child,” she said.
Moscow has not concealed a program under which it has brought thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia but presents it as a humanitarian campaign to protect orphans and children abandoned in the war zone.
Russia’s deputy UN ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy hit back at the UK’s move to block the webcast, saying: “Russia will from now on block UN webcasts of all similar meetings citing ‘UK censorship clause’.”
Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, told reporters last month that the informal meeting of security council members to be held on Wednesday had been planned long before the ICC announcement and it was not intended to be a rebuttal of the charges against Putin and Lvova-Belova.
According to a report published by Lvova-Belova’s office on Tuesday, 16 children from nine families have been reunited with their Ukrainian relatives since 29 March.
She refused to publish a complete list of Ukrainian children brought to Russia.
According to the report, 380 Ukrainian orphans have been placed in foster families in Russia, including 22 minors found abandoned in Mariupol - a port city virtually razed to the ground before its capture by Russian forces last year.
Lvova-Belova said adopted children were given Russian nationality while keeping their Ukrainian one.
Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
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