Thank you, Mr Chair.
Thank you Professors Wolff and Ascencio; thank you Doctor Steinerte. Your report is expert, detailed and authoritative. It records how Russia operates a coordinated mechanism of indoctrination and militarisation of Ukrainian children in the occupied territories, which is enforced through pervasive coercion. It also makes clear how indoctrination operates across every level of the school system in the occupied territories, and how militarisation extends beyond the classroom through state-sponsored military-patriotic youth organisations and re-education camps.
Furthermore, your report concludes that Russia has violated International Humanitarian Law on a grand scale and is responsible for numerous and overlapping violations of International Human Rights Law.
Your findings are deeply concerning and we call on Russia to implement in full the recommendations within your report.
Mr Chair, dialogue and cooperation should lie at the heart of this organisation. Indeed, OSCE leaders established the Moscow Mechanism to further respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms “through dialogue and cooperation”. It has been invoked six times since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Each time Ukraine has opened its territory to expert scrutiny and ensured access across relevant government ministries, agencies and facilitated contact with independent civil society.
Russia has not engaged in any of those Moscow Mechanism invocations.
Since Russia has again chosen not to cooperate with this OSCE Human Dimension Mechanism, in a spirit of dialogue and cooperation on human rights, I want to use my time at this Council to ask the following questions of the Russian Federation.
When will Russia cease its widespread and systematic efforts to compel loyalty from Ukrainian children through militarisation, indoctrination and coercion?
When will Russia provide a total number and list of names of unaccompanied children who have been forcibly transferred from Ukraine to the Russian Federation or within the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine since thec 24 February 2022?
When will Russia release Ukrainian civilians like Ivan Zabavskyi? Ivan and other Ukrainian civilians just like him are being unjustly held in Russian jails, often following months of incommunicado detention and mistreatment. The Moscow Mechanism report in April 2024 exposed these facts.
And, when will Russia release the three detained OSCE staff members – Vadym Golda, Maksym Petrov and Dmytro Shabanov, who have been unjustly detained since 2022?
This is not the first time these questions have been asked of the Russian Federation. A Russian refusal to answer these questions, Mr Chair, would speak volumes about their claims to seek dialogue and to uphold OSCE principles and commitments.
