US Representative to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield has said at a UN Security Council meeting that Kremlin officials are overseeing filtration measures in occupied Ukrainian territory.
“And I want to be clear. The United States has information that officials from Russia’s Presidential Administration are overseeing and coordinating these filtration operations. And we are further aware that Russian Presidential Administration officials are providing lists of Ukrainians to be targeted for filtration, and receiving reports on the scope and the progress of operations,” she said, according to the official readout.
“These operations aim to identify individuals Russia deems insufficiently compliant or compatible to its control. And there is mounting and credible evidence that those considered threatening to Russian control because of perceived pro-Ukrainian leanings are ‘disappeared’ or further detained,” she noted, adding that there is evidence they are simply killed.
According to US extimates, Russian authorities have interrogated, detained, forcibly deported between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens from their homes to Russia – often to isolated regions in the Far East.
“Thousands of children have been subject to filtration, some separated from their families and taken from orphanages before being put up for adoption in Russia. The United States has information that over the course of July alone, more than 1,800 children were transferred from Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine to Russia,” Ms. Thomas-Greenfield said, adding that deportation of persons from occupied territories, to the territory of the occupier is a breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians, and constitutes a war crime.
The US representative added that the goal of filtration is to change sentiments by force by providing a fraudulent veneer of legitimacy for the Russian occupation and prepare for conducting illegitimate referenda to annex the regions Russia occupied.
