Vladimir Putin’s crimes against Ukraine are often facilely compared with those committed by Hitler’s Nazis during World War Two. As Gary Lineker has crassly demonstrated, the unique crimes of National Socialism are the gold standard of evil that careless people reach for all too easily when they wish to comment on, or criticise, a contemporary issue.
In one under-reported way, however, Putin is indeed imitating the hideous crimes Nazi Germany carried out in Eastern Europe’s badlands 80 years ago: by abducting Ukraine’s children from their parents and taking them abroad. An arrest warrant has today been issued against Putin by the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Among the war crimes Russia’s leader is accused of is the unlawful deportation of children. Unrestrained by either the internationally recognised rules of war, or simple human decency, Russia has deported thousands of young Ukrainians from their homes and families.
Russia has said the abductions are, in fact, ‘voluntary evacuations’ of children
Estimates of the numbers involved vary wildly.
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