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A post from simplicius’ blog about the drone attacks on Russian airfields with various videos linked.
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/ukraines-unprecedented-operationUkraine keep effing Russia over, there is no doubt that Russia have no idea what Ukraine is up to. Very dangerous situation.
Ukraine hits bridge linking Crimea to Russia with underwater explosives
And earlier today Ukraine struck multiple electrical center causing outages just hours after the “peace”-talks.
–On another topic, kind a weird how the ukrainian elite/military embrace judaism no?
“Judaism” of the Ukrainian elites: a trick to retain power?
https://spzh.eu/en/zashhita-very/83891-judaism-of-the-ukrainian-elites-a-trick-to-retain-power
MoA has a piece referring to two interesting points. The first being the Russian offer to return 6000 bodies of dead Ukrainian soldiers. This would require Ukraine to admit their deaths and pay out over 2 billion dollars of compensation to their families.
The second relates to the “kidnapping” of Ukrainian children by Russian forces. It turns out that when Ukraine handed over a list of “kidnapped” children there were 339 names on it.
“they earlier claimed that tens and hundreds of thousands of children had been brought over here. In fact, the actual number is 339 and we still need to check how many are in Russia, evacuated by our soldiers from under fire, and how many will eventually turn up in Europe, as experience shows…”
Blair and Major reassured Russia about Nato expansion
Two British prime ministers recognised Moscow’s fears over Nato expanding in eastern Europe – a major cause of the Ukraine war – files show.
MARK CURTIS
4 June 2025
https://www.declassifieduk.org/blair-and-major-reassured-russia-about-nato-expansion/Incredible weak response by Russia (in reaction to the unprecedented drone attacks by Ukraine). Why would Ukraine stop their actions just because Russia bombed some facilities i return? Actually just hours after the russian attack, Ukraine struck an oil site in Russia:
Drone attack set fire to industrial site in Russia’s Engels, governor says
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/drone-attack-set-fire-industrial-site-russias-engels-governor-says-2025-06-06/
Russia have no clue what they are up to. I do not know if it there is some groupthink going on or if Russia is simply too weak/incompetent to stop Ukraine. Perhaps Russia was also too naive believing that Trump actually had the interest to stop the war but obviously Trump is not interested on putting the brakes on the American arms and intelligence flowing to Ukraine and yesterday and he said that perhaps it is better for Russia and Ukraine to just keep fighting a bit more.On top of it, the ukrainian escalation have raised the fighting spirit of ukrainians:
Most Ukrainians will tolerate conflict ‘as long as necessary’ – survey
Support for continuing to fight has reportedly risen to 60%, despite earlier signs of fatigue, according to pollstershttps://swentr.site/russia/618742-ukraine-support-long-conflict-poll/
I see that Ukraine has suspended indefinitely the exchange of prisoners and bodies which was meant to happen this weekend as agreed in Istanbul.
Jack, what would you have Russia do in response? I’d leave it to the Russian administration to work out what’s best for Russia.
Tatyana et. al. – perhaps of interest to witness the madness in German media:
About the famous mass abduction of Ukrainian children – major German daily TAZ, which calls itself left, with a long interview with a crazy Ukrainian lawyer, Kateryna Rashevska.
“She holds a doctorate in international law and works as a legal expert at the Regional Center for Human Rights in Kyiv. Rashevska contributed to documents submitted to the International Criminal Court, which made possible the criminal order against Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova (as well as Alexander Lukashenko) for the abduction of Ukrainian children.”
It´s an embarrassing interview.
German version
https://taz.de/Hoffnung-fuer-ukrainische-Kinder/!6089910/“There is a whole system of indoctrination”
Russia has kidnapped thousands of Ukrainian children in order to raise them in a way that is loyal to Putin. Lawyer Kateryna Rashevska specializes in these cases.Interview by Jens Uthoff
“(…)
taz: Ms. Rashevska, Ukraine handed Russia a list of names of abducted children during the negotiations in Istanbul and declared their return a condition. How do you view this initiative?Kateryna Rashevska: I strongly support the return of all Ukrainian children before a ceasefire and peace agreement, because children are not prisoners of war or civilian detainees. This would also allow us to find out whether the Russians are truly capable of complying with agreements. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that they will agree to this at the moment.
taz: The Ombudsman for Children’s Rights in Ukraine has documented nearly 20,000 cases of child abductions to the Russian Federation, but the number is likely far higher. How are the children abducted?
Rashevska: It often happens like this: Russian parents come to the occupied territories, select children from boarding schools, and adopt them. These boarding schools were created by Russia; they house orphans or children whom the authorities have taken from their families on the grounds that they were mistreated there. The last case of such a deportation was documented by my organization in April 2025 of this year. So, the deportations continue. Legally, things get complicated at this point: Russia does not violate international humanitarian law when it deprives “bad” parents of their rights.
taz: Is it even possible to verify what exactly happened?
Rashevska: No. We don’t have access to the occupied territories to verify whether there have been any abductions or abuses, or whether Russia has used the deprivation of parental rights as a means of exerting pressure on the parents. The Russian Federation has no right to place such children in Russian families. Russia would be obligated to contact Ukraine, the child’s country of origin, to clarify the issue of the child’s continued placement. But of course, this doesn’t always happen.
taz: When did these abductions begin?
Rashevska: Already with the annexation of Crimea. According to the OSCE, over 1,000 children have been brought from there alone to Russia, to Siberia or the Far East, since 2014. These transports were concealed from the beginning by pretending to help or evacuate children. At the end of 2014, the first “Train of Hope” departed Crimea, attracting media attention, and twelve Ukrainian children were brought to Russia.
taz: What did Russia do to legitimize the acts?
Rashevska: For example, the Russian Federation decreed that all Ukrainian orphans from Crimea would become Russian orphans. And later began to extend this legislation to the other occupied territories. It’s important to note that extensive research has shown , among other things, that nine out of ten orphans from the occupied territories were not “biological orphans,” but social orphans. This means they have identifiable parents.
taz: What is Russia doing with the children?
Rashevska: For example, they place them with Russian families who want children. The foster families for children from Crimea were very carefully selected; for example, they ended up with families who had lost their own children and desperately wanted new ones. This is very similar to what the Nazis did in some Eastern European countries during World War II as part of the “Lebensborn” program. They kidnapped children there and offered them for adoption to staunch Nazis. They, too, often placed the children with families who treated them well. Putin is forcibly Russifying all these children, granting them Russian citizenship, which further complicates their possible return.
taz: What do the adoptive parents get from the state in return?
Rashevska: Adoptive parents receive a one-time and monthly payment. However, Putin now also awards the status of “Mother Hero” to adoptive mothers who raise ten or more children.
taz: All with the aim of shaping the children ideologically?
Rashevska: Yes. Putin wants to re-educate these children and young people and turn them into enemies of Ukraine. Initially, the foster parents were often teachers, but now they are increasingly representatives of the Russian army or other people expected to be loyal to the state. Putin also wants to wrest these children away from Ukraine: According to our data, boys aged 14 to 17 make up the largest group of children placed in Russian families after 2022. I suspect that Russia may not actually intend to send all of these boys into the Russian army upon reaching adulthood, but rather that they primarily want to deprive Ukraine of this opportunity.
taz: The Ukrainian authorities have registered 19,564 cases of child abductions in the occupied territories, of which 1,345 children have been able to return – thanks in part to organizations like Save Ukraine and SOS Children’s Villages . How are these figures calculated?
Rashevska: They come from various sources. In approximately 3,000 cases, parents or grandparents reported them missing and reported this to the Ukrainian police. Then there were also around 4,000 children who were orphans or grew up without parental care. The institutions they were in came under Russian control, and the Russians themselves reported that the children had been taken away. Sometimes children who were able to return know other children in Russia, can remember their first and last names, and then an investigation is carried out. And information from open sources is used to identify children, for example, photos from Ukrainian registers or other tools. It can be assumed that the actual number is much higher.
taz: You’re a lawyer at the Regional Center for Human Rights in Kyiv. What can you do for the abducted children?
Rashevska: Currently, all we can do is gather evidence. We have no access to Russian territory and the occupied territories. But we cannot resign ourselves or assume that these children will not return anyway. We need evidence so that we can open criminal proceedings at the national level in Ukraine and bring cases before the International Criminal Court.
taz: What evidence do you have and how do you secure it?
Rashevska: We cannot disclose some sources of evidence. However, we use publicly available information and have an extensive network of partners – journalists, activists, volunteers, and cyber specialists – who can provide us with data that the Russian side is trying to conceal. The Russians also sometimes document their actions themselves when they speak openly about the abduction of Ukrainian children and their Russification. All publicly available evidence is preserved. Likewise, all other information is immediately forwarded to national investigative authorities and international organizations.
taz: In 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and the Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova. Both are accused of “war crimes of unlawful deportation of the population.” Did this have any effect?
Rashevska: Yes. For example, there were children who were held in so-called re-education camps. Some were able to return. The Russians didn’t actively do anything about it—they even placed additional obstacles in the way of families who had the courage to travel to these camps in Crimea or Russia to bring their children back to Ukraine. The parents succeeded nonetheless. However, due to their scale, the deportations should be legally recognized as crimes against humanity. Because these were coordinated and state-supported deportations in many thousands.
taz: What role does Marija Lwowa-Belowa play?
Rashevska: A very active one. She bears more than just some of the responsibility. At one point, she even took in and fostered a boy from Mariupol, exploiting the children and using them for propaganda purposes. But Putin, of course, enables the practice of child abduction; as early as 2022, he simplified the acquisition of Russian citizenship for Ukrainian “children without parental care and legally incapacitated persons.” This makes the deportations possible.
taz: Has the strategy regarding child abductions changed over time?
Rashevska: What’s new is that the Putin regime has now organized an entire system of indoctrination in the occupied territories, encompassing the entire formal education system—schools, kindergartens, and universities. There’s no longer any need to detain children in re-education camps.
taz: Some children have been living with Russian parents for over ten years. How realistic is it that they will return?
Rashevska: Ukrainian society urgently needs to discuss this. Would it be acceptable to bring back the children deported in 2014? They’ve since integrated; they grew up as Russians. Bringing them back would likely be against the best interests of the children. This is a very sensitive issue. The answer to this question lies not only in the legal and moral sphere, but also in the sphere of Ukraine’s national interests and security. We can’t simply say that the children should be left to the Russians. However, we would have to acknowledge that some of our abducted children will remain in Russia forever.
(…)”The phantasy of the abducted Ukrainian children matches the Skripal story in its elaborate creation. It started with the USA State Department / CIA funding a research unit at Yale University (now defunded by Trump) to create the phantasy using the university reputation to carry out a junk study wrapped up as using “innovative methods” to obtain the evidence. The innovative methods involving open – access material were simply designed to create an illusion of authenticity – if it is all there in the public domain it must be true.
There was no actual research report just something, more like a press release – it would not have passed peer review for sure – which was mass mailed to every media outfit possible across the USA and beyond which a google search shows duly published it more or less simultaneously thus creating a mass effect across the world. The rest then followed with the court application and arrest warrant for Putin and the Russia Children’s Ombudsmen.
No journalist as far as I can see has bothered to read the Russia Ombudsman’s account of what happened which offers a far more plausible explanation than the rubbish talked about in the interview by a “lawyer” who admitted she did not have the evidence to verify her claims and so just made it up.
Google Russian Children Ombudsman to find https://deti.gov.ru/,Abducted Ukrainian children (there are also those original Twitter reports about the Yale case back when it was brandnew but I don´t have the time to dig them up. I remember the reporter whose account it was was immediately was denounced as antisemitic – this was well before Oct 7th. The Grayzone later corrobarated that first report.)
1) CNN
“CNN report debunks Ukraine’s claim about Russia kidnapping all their citizens”
18.04.2023
1:51 min.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWDkn7onw_M2) THE GRAYZONE
“ICC’s Putin arrest warrant based on State Dept-funded report that debunked itself”
by Jeremy Loffredo and Max Blumenthal
March 31, 2023
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/03/31/iccs-putin-arrest-state-dept-report/3) THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE
“Is Russia Kidnapping Ukrainian Children?
State of the Union: An alleged war crime turns out to be more complicated”
by Helen Andrews
May 16, 2024
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/is-russia-kidnapping-ukrainian-children/4) German NACHDENKSEITEN
https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=133978machine-translation:
Negotiations in Istanbul: How the narrative of the kidnapped children collapsedRussia has kidnapped tens of thousands of Ukrainian children and brought them to Russia. They are being “Russified” there, robbed of their identity, and assimilated, according to claims in Germany. The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin as a result. This story collapsed during negotiations to resolve the Ukraine conflict on Monday. For German media consumers, a spectacle was once again staged that bears absolutely no resemblance to reality. By
by Gert-Ewen UngarJune 4th 2025
https://archive.is/BDeyn5) https://twitter.com/Navsteva/status/1644424893738409989?t=T1EionL8Y5ZZmojlKlit3w&s=19:
“(…) Lvova-Belova testified that of the more than 5 million refugees whom Russia has taken in since February 2022, there have been around 700,000 children. All have come with their parents, relatives, or legal guardians, except for 2,000 who were in orphanages in the Donbass republics, subject to Ukrainian artillery. Now that Russia has established control and stability over major areas of Donbass, about 1,300 of them have been returned to their Donbass orphanages; another 400 or so whose orphanages in Donbass are still unsafe, remain in orphanages in Russia; finally, there are 358 orphans in foster homes.Lvova-Belova explained that, to date, there are 16 Ukrainian children staying in children’s health camps in Crimea and the Krasnodar region. “Parents of some of those children are in the European Union now. We have submitted the information to the International Committee of the Red Cross, and we do very much hope for their assistance in reuniting” the children with their families. “Everybody demands that parents and children be reunited…. However, we do not see a single fact or a single document of the Ukrainian side, except the statements released on social networks and in the media by the country’s leadership.” She repeated multiple times that the Russian authorities are unable to contact Ukrainian authorities under Kiev law, and therefore contacts must take place via third parties, which increases how much time it takes to reunite families.(…)”
6) German ANTI-SPIEGEL (unfortunately I can´t get it translated)
“The Legend of the Ukrainian Children Allegedly Deported to Russia
At the recent negotiations in Istanbul, Kyiv presented a list of the names of 339 children who were allegedly “deported” to Russia and whom Kyiv wants back. Why does Kyiv only name 339 children when Ukraine and the West are talking about almost 20,000 “deported” children?”
June 7th 2025
https://anti-spiegel.ru/2025/die-legende-der-angeblich-nach-russland-deportierten-ukrainischen-kinder/I can try to translate it later. But then anybody else can do the same job using Google by manually C&P the text.
7) On Naked Capitalism we had this exchange on the topic a few months ago:Question:
“(…)
But on the other hand there is a UN report saying it did happen, in an admittedly small scale, and that they reviewed 164 cases and they have the documentation for it and define it as a war crime. From march 2023. See page 14My attmept of a response was:
“(…)
When I first read the UN report back then I found it odd and still do.Considering the scale of this war, what is at stake, the vicious nature of the fighting, the presence of mercenaries and neo-nazi units with the specific job to spread terror among civilians in areas where they are not being checked – all that makes it feel an extreme stretch to come to the conclusion to call their findings a war crime. How e.g. are families supposed to cross the contact line to reach their children? Do they seriously expect Russian special forces sneak into Ukrainian controlled territory, locate the families, deliver the children and return without getting killed.
Granted Red Cross could carry out such actions. But I have no clue – does Red Cross still cooperate with Russia? Do we know whether there were offers by the Russians to the Ukrainian officials to bring back children which the Ukrainians with bad intent declined knowing they could use the result as per UN Commission report? Especially if the parents/kids concerned are Russian by ethnicity? How many Russian Ukrainians fled to Russia permanently after 8 years of Civil War and now this war? There is not a single word mentioning the racist nature of the Kiev government. By design the UN assumes the government is benign and well-meaning towards parents despite them possibly being Russians. The entire war is taking place in the Russian part of the country. This matters but is not even hinted at.
I see so many strings attached to this issue which are not at all addressed in the report. Which as you say is very brief considering the significance of the allegations and their impact re: ICC. In fact I find it even more inadequate and even naive with the newly acquired knowledge since the report was published.
And as you point out: Just look at the numbers – the Ukrainians claim 16.000 children. Even UN says, very politely, that is way exaggerated. In order to then settle with 164??? That´s absurdly low and exact a number considering all the complications and the chaos in this war-torn country the report is stressing.
And among those 164 we do not know how many with certainty have been taken away without any urgency and against kids/parents will. Because that´s actually the charge that matters.
The Ukrainian government is responsible for conducting a war with 1,1 M dead. And the ICC is calling Putin a war criminal based on 164 children without knowing about the reasons why they are not at home?
Last point: I would like to see those testimonies by the parents and the kids. I remember reports which did question this statement.
The big problem: The UN is not a neutral party here. The leverage the Ukrainian authorities have here via US, F and GB cannot be overstated (e.g. compare Bucha investigations).
I watched the UN press conferences back then. It was insane. Since it was Geneva or New York the likelihood that Western press was present in overwhelming numbers and pushing the UN team with questions smearing Russia constantly was difficult to bear. At one point even the most astute UN officials will fold at some point.
As I wrote before, in Berlin alone 116 children were “discovered”. Are those 116 from the stated 164? I doubt it. But there is so much hidden, muddied or simply fabricated.
Please correct me if I have overlooked some major points. May be I have become weary of the incessant anti-Russian meddling everywhere and have developed too biased a perception.
(…)”plus
“(…)
When I looked into it when it was all new and sensational it turned out the Yale boys and girls did their research online and contacted parents in question online.
Everything. Virtual. Not. One. Single. On. Location. Visit.Insane. And based on that they filed their case at ICC?
For instance – RT reported one year ago – April 18th 2024 – that 116 kids were “discovered” to be living happily with their parents in Germany:
Federal Criminal Police Office: Children allegedly abducted to Russia live with their parents in Germany
https://dert.site/inland/203069-bundeskriminalamt-angeblich-nach-russland-entfuehrte/
Use google translateAnd I assume there are countless such cases due to the wave of refugees which were literally millions of people on the move claiming that Putin intends to kill them all.
I assume the PR agency with the assignement figured that in the wake of the war breaking out and the insane hysteria in the West you could well sell this bullshit and hide the truth.
(…)”Whether RT or not, the statement by German authorities was genuine. It happened. It just simply was almost not reported. Guess why. The first person to inform us was Tatyana of all people!
