Press Briefing with Nicole Chulick, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

MODERATOR:  Greetings to everyone from the U.S. Department of State’s Media Hub of the Americas in Miami, Florida.  I would like to welcome our participants who have dialed in from the United States and across the world.  This is an on-the-record press briefing with the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Nicole Chulick.  Deputy Assistant Secretary Chulick will discuss the U.S. Government’s assessment of Russia’s system of forced transfers and deportations of Ukraine’s children and how we can support Ukraine’s effort to locate and return this population.

As a reminder, today’s briefing is on the record.  And with that, I will turn it over to Deputy Assistant Secretary Chulick.

MS CHULICK:  Good afternoon.  Thank you for joining me today to discuss a somber but important topic.  As we mark two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we remember the incalculable losses suffered by Ukraine.  Today, I would like to discuss the harm suffered by Ukraine’s most vulnerable population – its children – due to Russia’s system of forced transfer and deportation.

Russia’s war has forced many parents on the front lines in Ukraine to face an impossible decision:  They can keep their family together, where their children face grave danger due to Russia’s attacks, or they can agree to send their children to so-called “summer camps” in Russia or Russia-occupied Crimea, from where their children might never return.  In other cases, there is no choice:  Russia’s forces and proxies have emptied Ukraine’s orphanages and homes for children with disabilities and moved these children deep inside Russia.

We know this is a deliberate, systematic effort by the Kremlin.  Shortly after the start of its full-scale invasion, the Kremlin enacted legislation to relocate Ukrainian children to Russia and provide them with fast-tracked Russian citizenship.  Putin encouraged Russia’s regional leaders to sponsor so-called “summer camps” for Ukrainian children.  We know that Russian officials at all levels have facilitated this system, from Putin to proxy authorities in Russia-occupied areas of Ukraine to heads of orphanages in these areas.

Russian authorities have created numerous obstacles to the return of Ukraine’s children.  They have refused to answer requests for information from the Government of Ukraine on thousands of cases.  They have rebuffed offers from humanitarian organizations to help return children.  Of the more than 19,000 children Russia has relocated from institutions in temporarily occupied Ukraine, only a small fraction – about 400 – have been returned.

Take Margarita, a 10-month-old girl who, according to open-source reports, was being treated at the Kherson Children’s Home for bronchitis in August 2022.  According to doctors, she was taken to Russia by a woman who introduced herself as the head of children’s affairs from Moscow.  Margarita’s location did not come to light until more than a year later, when investigative journalists from the BBC tracked her down via a birth record in Russia, where she had been renamed Marina Mironova.  The woman who took her: the wife of Putin ally and Russian Duma member Sergei Mironov.  Margarita was not an orphan.  She has family that is fighting to get her back, but Russia has refused.

Tragically, Margarita’s story is not unique.  Another group of Ukrainian infants were being sheltered by a pastor in a church near Kherson when Russian forces occupied the area.  Soldiers ordered these children to be sent to the same children’s home where Margarita had been treated.  A few months later, Russian soldiers and politicians transported them to Russian-occupied Crimea.  None of this is a secret.  It was shared on social media for the world to see.

Despite the Kremlin’s claims to the contrary, Russia’s system of forced child transfers and deportations is no rescue mission.  Reports have widely documented that these children are subjected to militaristic, pro-Russia reeducation.  They are obstructed from contacting their families, who Russian officials reportedly say have abandoned them.  They are told Ukraine no longer exists.

We know that Russia’s system of forced transfers and deportations is part of a long history of the Kremlin seeking to deny and suppress Ukraine’s national identity.  The Kremlin has long sought to Russify Ukraine, from the Holodomor to the expulsion of Crimean Tatars, the importation of Russian workers into the Donbas in the 1950s and ‘60s, brutal language policies that sought to suppress Ukrainian from the days of the Russian tsar to the Soviet commissar, and gross historical revisionism.  Ending these practices is a top U.S. priority, with this commitment going all the way up to President Biden.

The United States will continue to shine a spotlight on Russia’s abusive system and raise international awareness.  We will continue to highlight this issue in multilateral fora, as we did during our UN Security Council presidency last August, and as we do regularly in the OSCE Permanent Council.  We will continue to support documentation of Russia’s egregious acts, as we have through our support to the UN’s Commission of Inquiry and OSCE Moscow Mechanism experts’ missions as well as support to Ukrainian NGOs, humanitarian organizations, child protection initiatives, and independent research initiatives.

Finally, we continue to support multiple pathways to justice for Ukraine, and we are committed to ensuring those responsible are held to account.  We support Ukrainian authorities, including the office of its prosecutor general and other international investigations and inquiries, including the ICC’s investigation.  And on February 22nd, just a few days ago, we announced our second tranche of visa restrictions for those involved in Russia’s forced transfer and deportation system.

As Secretary Blinken stated in his address to the UN one year ago, “Day after day of Russia’s atrocities, it’s easy to become numb to the horror, to lose our ability to feel shock and outrage, but we can never let the crimes Russia is committing become our new normal.”

In closing, I will reiterate the pledge of President Biden and Secretary Blinken:  We stand united with Ukraine.

MODERATOR:  Thank you.  We will now begin the question-and-answer portion of today’s briefing.  We received our first question from Ricardo Alexandre de Lima from Em Tempo Noticias in Brazil:  “Is the United States Government seeking international cooperation to address the illegal deportations of the more than 19,000 Ukrainian children?  If so, what initiatives are underway?  Is the U.S. Government considering providing specific humanitarian assistance to the children affected by these illegal deportations?  If yes, in what way?  Given the context, how does the American Government assess the risk of its potential intervention escalating conflicts in the region?”

MS CHULICK:  Thank you for the question.  So we are already working internationally with local and international organizations to provide humanitarian assistance to Ukraine.  In fact, our total assistance into Ukraine in 2023 was 2.9 billion, 1.3 billion of that in humanitarian assistance.

But I want to take a moment to highlight some of the other things we’re doing that are directly related to combatting Russia’s system of forced transfers and deportations.

First, we’re supporting reporting and investigations.  So we support the Conflict Observatory, which is a consortium including Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which published the definitive report to date on Russia’s forced transfer and deportation system.  We’ve created and renewed the UN Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, and with allies and partners in cooperation with Ukraine we invoked the OSCE Moscow Mechanism.  Reports from all three of these efforts have advanced public knowledge on this issue and helped inform our approaches to accountability.

Which brings me to number two:  We are supporting accountability.  We are supporting investigations and prosecutions through the office of Ukraine’s prosecutor general via the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group.  This initiative was established by the European Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom in partnership with Ukraine to support best practices, streamline efforts, and encourage deployment of financial resources and skilled personnel.

We’re raising this issue – number three – in every forum that we can.  We raise the issue in multilateral settings, including the UN Security Council, the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council, and the OSCE Permanent Council.  In fact, in August 2023, during our Security Council presidency, we held a briefing on Russia’s deportation system and cosponsored a side event on the issue during High-Level Week which featured Ukraine’s first lady.  At the OSCE we’ve raised this issue during weekly Permanent Council sessions.  We also raised our deep concerns about Russia’s forcible child transfers and deportations in the working sessions of the Warsaw Human Dimension Conference in October, and also co-sponsored a side event.

Number four:  We’re supporting civil society, as I mentioned in my opening remarks.  We support leading Ukrainian civil society organizations who document and expose Russia’s forcible child transfer and deportation system.

And finally, we are pursuing sanctions and visa restrictions.  On August 24th and then again, as I mentioned, on February 22nd, we announced a series of sanctions and visa restrictions to promote accountability for perpetrators involved in the deportation system.

Thank you.

MODERATOR:  Thank you, DAS Chulick.  The next question, we’ll invite Angelica Franganillo from NTN24 to ask live.  Please unmute yourself.

QUESTION:  Hello?

MODERATOR:  Please go ahead.

QUESTION:  I’m so sorry.  Hi.  My question is:  So CNN reported that Europe is still – will not send more troops to Ukraine as Russian forces keep advancing to Ukraine territory, and here in the United States the White House and Congress can’t seem to get together or team to collude into helping and agree to send more aid to Ukraine.  Is – what are other actions that the Department of State is planning to help Ukraine as Russian forces keep advancing in Ukraine territory?  Thank you so much.

MS CHULICK:  Thank you for the question.  And I know it wasn’t really the focus of your question, but I wanted to respond to one part of it and just saying that it is Ukrainian troops who are fighting this in Ukraine, not European troops.  The U.S. President, President Biden, has made clear that we will continue to support Ukraine.  The supplemental is only a piece of this support.  And the President has also emphasized the fact that there is bipartisan support for Ukraine in Congress.  So this support will continue.  Thank you.

MODERATOR:  Thank you, Deputy Assistant Secretary.  The next question we just received from Ernesto Cornejo, a journalist with Channel 12 in El Salvador:  “How are you working for Ukrainian families who find themselves at different border points requesting asylum in the United States?”  Over to you, Deputy Assistant Secretary.

MS CHULICK:  Got it.  So thank you.  And while that is not entirely in my lane – because that’s more a Department of Homeland Security question on the asylum piece – we are working through partner organizations to ensure that Ukrainians who are seeking asylum, whether in the United States or in other locations, do get the support they need.  We work through a host of organizations, and particularly United for Ukraine, which brings all of those threads together.

MODERATOR:  Thank you.  The next question we received in advance from Cláudia Godoy from Bacuri Brasil, a blog based in Brazil:  “I was in Poland to see up close the reception of refugees from the war in Ukraine.  I saw the difficulties with children who arrived without speaking the language and facing the sudden change in routine and the tragedy of war.  How do you think about assisting refugee children and their mothers?  They were the majority of victims of the war.”

MS CHULICK:  Thank you for that question, and thank you for highlighting the work that the Government of Poland is doing on this issue.  We applaud the assistance they are providing in this realm.  So we’re going a number of things.  We partner with international organizations.  Particularly we’ve worked with UNICEF on providing critical support to Ukraine in assisting refugee children and their mothers.

As I’d mentioned, the total Ukraine assistance we provided in 2023 was about 2.9 billion, 1.3 billion of that direct in humanitarian assistance, and that reached 1.5 million children via – we worked with UNICEF.  So that was 1.5 million refugee children that we were able to assist in some way or another, specifically in the realm of health care, mental health, general care, or education.

So thank you for that question.

MODERATOR:  Thank you, Deputy Assistant Secretary.  So we’ve gone through the questions that we’ve received in advance, but since we have a little more time, I wanted to offer the opportunity for any of the journalists online to submit any questions via the question-and-answer box.

Okay, not seeing any questions, I wanted to thank you, Deputy Assistant Secretary Chulick, for joining us, and thank all of the journalists on the line for participating.  If you have any questions about today’s briefing, you may contact the Miami Media Hub at MiamiHub@state.gov.  An English recording and transcript will be available for this briefing.  Thank you, and have a good day.

MS CHULICK:  Thank you.