Ukraine has charged a Russian politician and two collaborators with war crimes over the alleged deportation of dozens of young orphans.
The country claims more than 19,000 children have been illegally transferred to Russia or Russian-held territory.
Officials said the suspects were the first to be charged in the matter.
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Prosecution documents seen by Reuters allege 48 children were forcibly displaced from a children’s home in Kherson in September and October and taken to Moscow and occupied Crimea.
The children are said to have been aged between one and four. Prosecutors said their current location is uncertain.
Russia denies violating children’s rights and says its forces were rescuing them from conflict zones.
“It was not a one-day event. Forty-eight children who were in the Kherson Region Children’s Home were forcibly displaced, deported,” said Yuliia Usenko, head of child protection in the prosecutor’s office.
The children are said t have been taken from Kherson regional children’s home. Pic: AP
“We don’t know how these children are, in what conditions they are kept, or what their fate is.
“They may have been illegally adopted by Russian citizens, or taken to Russian institutions,” said Ms Usenko.
The suspects’ names are redacted in the documents – and they are thought to be in Russia or Crimea – but the trial could be held without them present.
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The charges, if proven, are against the Geneva Conventions and punishable by up to 12 years in prison under Ukrainian law.
The Ukrainian charges follow a wider investigation by the International Criminal Court.
In March, it issued arrest warrants for President Putin and Russia’s children’s rights commissioner over the claims.
