Some 150 children have been illegally taken from the occupied Luhansk region to Russia, Ukraine said on Friday.
They were abducted from Starobilsk district on June 8 and taken to two centres in the Prikuban district of Russia’s Karachay-Cherkess republic, the National Resistance Centre said.
The centre, set up by Special Operations Forces of Ukraine, a branch of the country’s military, said 750 children from Luhansk were expected to arrive this month at the two centres in Karachay-Cherkess.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that more than 19,000 children have been illegally taken to Russia from Ukraine’s occupied territories since the war began last year.
The international criminal court in March issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for overseeing the abductions.
Russia’s children’s rights commissioner, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, was also named by the court as bearing responsibility for the “unlawful deportation” of the children.
It comes as the British Ministry of Defence confirmed one of Putin’s most senior generals has been killed in southern Ukraine.
General-major Sergei Goryachev is the highest ranked Russian military commander confirmed dead in the brutal war this year.
UK defence chiefs believe he was likely to have been acting as commander of Russia’s 35th combined arms army at the time of his death.
Goryachev, the CAA’s chief of staff, was “almost certainly” killed in a strike on a command post, the MoD said on Friday.
Parts of the army were present during the massacre of civilians in Bucha in March 2022.
Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-installed official in part of the Zaporizhzhia region, confirmed Goryachev’s death earlier this week, saying the army had “lost one of its brightest and most effective military commanders”.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is continuing with its counter offensive. Kyiv’s troops have regained control of almost 40 square miles of territory, senior Ukrainian military commander Brigadier General Oleksii Hromov has said.
Deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, said there was a “gradual but steady advance”.
However Russian forces have put up a “powerful” resistance on the southern front.
Britain and its allies will send more “vital” air defence systems to Ukraine, the UK Defence Secretary has said.
Ben Wallace met his Nato counterparts at the alliance’s HQ in Brussels this week to agree a new package of support.
