Segovia, Mar 19 (EFE).- The Ukrainian activist Oleksandra (Sasha) Romantsova, director of the NGO Libertads Civiles, Nobel Peace Prize 2022, considered this Sunday that the arrest warrant against the president “is good news” Russian Valdimir Putin.
Ukrainian activist Romantsova thinks it’s good news
The order has been issued by the International Criminal Court as responsible for war crimes for the illegal deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia.
In an interview with EFE, before participating in Segovia in the XI Meeting of Women that Transform the World, she stated that “the forced transfer of children to Russia is one of the biggest problems because they are more vulnerable, especially orphans, while the older ones can flee to Europe”.
The activist fears that stolen children will end up disappearing
“We also fear that, in the end, they will end up disappearing, once they have been stolen,” he warned.
As for whether she trusts Putin to stand trial, Romantsova, 37, explains that this is the purpose of her organization’s work.
“But not only the president but also other authorities of the Russian Federation, and also the thousands of Russians involved in this aggression against Ukraine” and for this they advocate “for special courts, to address different war crimes committed.”
Civil Liberties estimates about 16,000 Ukrainian children transferred to Russia
The Center for Civil Liberties, according to its director, estimates that there may be about 16,000 Ukrainian children transferred to Russia.
But “there could be many more, even the Ukrainian authorities calculate tens of thousands, like 30,000, because there is no record of those who may have disappeared from the territories occupied by Russia, this will not be known until all the Ukrainian territory is liberated” .
In relation to other possible violations of human rights infringed by Russia, Romantsova has observed that they are “talking about numerous types of war crimes, from bombings of hospitals, schools, social institutions, shelters or people, also kidnappings, rapes or destruction of infrastructures such as electricity, the most important thing is that they are committed in the occupied territories, every day”.
“When we demand the liberation of the territories, we also ask for the liberation of the people, because there are some 20,000 civilians detained, apart from the prisoners of war, who do not have contact with their families, in addition to the fact that they are not being adequately fed and, when they are released, they suffer from anorexia, they are all war crimes and according to the Rome Statute”, he added.
They document all war crimes
Regarding the investigations into the legality of the action of the Ukrainian army carried out by the NGO, Romantsova explained that they document all the war crimes without concluding whether it was one party or another, but every time they perceive that it is Ukrainian soldiers who have acted against humanitarian laws bring it to the attention of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office so that he can act.
However, he has clarified that of the 34,000 cases that they have documented, “only one or two percent are suspected of having been committed by Ukrainian forces.” “We are asking our government to recognize the Rome Statute, not only as it affects its jurisdiction, but also to ratify it,” he stated.
Your country only has to fight and defend itself
Regarding her anticipation of the end of the war in Ukraine, Romantsova has defended that they have “no other alternative than to fight and defend ourselves, we would stop (the war) if there are other types of defense possibilities other than weapons, because we want to continue with our work, business or family life, we do not want to fight, but there is no other alternative than to defend ourselves”.
In addition, in the opinion of the director of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize-winning NGO, without justice they cannot “stop because there has been Mali, Syria, Libya and many other places before and, if Putin and other authorities of the Russian Federation, not They are tried and they are not held accountable for what they have done, it will happen again in others in other countries”.
“The territory must be liberated, the people must be freed and justice must be done so that there are no other Ukraines,” Romantsova claimed. EFE
