VLADIMIR Putin has been accused by the Ukrainian government of of kidnapping 2500 children.
The claim by a senior official comes after Vladimir Putin was likened to Adolf Hitler after reports his invading troops were deporting Ukrainians to sinister Russian work camps.
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Ukraine’s foreign ministry spokesman Oleg Nikoleno who said that on 19 March alone “Russia forcibly relocated 2389 children” from the eastern Donbas region.
“Abducting civilians is strictly prohibited by international humanitarian law,” he said.
“The Russian army deprives our children of parental care and endangers their lives in Russia. These heinous crimes must be stopped.”
Nikoleno did not provide any more details about where the children were sent to.
It comes as up to 5,000 residents were reportedly bundled away from the besieged city of Mariupol.
Many were taken to Taganrog in south-western Russia to support Putin’s deranged claim he was “liberating” Ukraine.
Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko likened Moscow’s actions to “the horrific events of World War Two, when the Nazis forcibly captured people”
Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the Donetsk regional administration, said: “The occupiers are sending the residents of Mariupol to filtration camps, checking their phones and seizing their Ukrainian documents.”
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Ukrainian MP Inna Sovsun told Times Radio yesterday people were being taken to “very distant parts of Russia” and “forced to sign papers saying that they will stay in that area for two or three years and they will work for free in those areas”.
Asked if this was slave labour, she said: “It is, yes. It is.”
Condemning the Kremlin’s “vicious and a barbarian attack on innocent civilians”, Boris Johnson also drew a direct comparison with the actions of the Nazis under Adolf Hitler in the 1940s.
The Prime Minister warned the Russian president would not stop at Ukraine, and a Putin victory would usher in the “beginning of a new age of intimidation across the whole of eastern Europe” and give “the green light for autocrats everywhere”.
The Tory leader said Putin is in a “total panic” about revolution in Moscow, and trying to “snuff out the flame of freedom in Ukraine”.
He added: “If Putin succeeds in crushing Ukraine, it will be the green light for autocrats everywhere in the Middle East, in the Far East.
“This is a turning point for the world. It’s a moment of choice. It’s a choice between freedom and oppression.”
Putin’s forces have forced ten million Ukrainians from their homes.
Supposed humanitarian corridors out of blitzed cities Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol and Sumy have been targeted by Moscow missiles, Ukraine said.
And escape routes leading only to Russia or Putin-backed Belarus were branded “immoral” by the United Nations.
But in the latest humiliating blow to Putin, the Deputy Commander of his Black Sea Fleet was killed yesterday.
Andrey Paliy was the sixth top military officer Russia has lost since the invasion of Ukraine.
After the killing of five army generals, first rank captain Andrey Paliy, 51, was the first senior naval officer killed in the war.
Konstantin Tsarenko, secretary of the public council of the Sevastopol Nakhimov Naval School and friend to Paliy, confirmed the officer’s death in a marine skirmish near Mariupol.
Paliy was born in Kyiv and in 1993 refused to take the Ukrainian military oath, instead serving in the Russian Northern Fleet.
He had earlier served on the Russian nuclear missile cruiser Peter the Great, and as deputy head of the Russian naval academy in Sevastopol, in annexed Crimea.
In yet more bad news for Russia, a US general warned its forces were running out of manpower and ammunition and had just a week left to conquer Ukraine.
Lt Gen Ben Hodges, a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, said the invaders were in trouble.
He insisted: “That’s why they have reached out to China for help and why they are now recruiting Syrians.
“Russian generals are running out of time, ammunition and manpower.”
He said Russia had already committed half its entire combat power to the war, adding: “At the height of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we were about 29 per cent committed — and it was difficult to sustain that.”
He said that on April 1, around 130,000 Russian families are required to send their sons aged 18 to 25 to conscription centres, to be inducted into the Russian Army.
Lt Gen Hodges said: “We should do all we can to influence that next intake.
“If we can get some of those families to join those who are already showing the courage to protest, that would send shockwaves across Russia.”
220,000 go back
PLUCKY Ukrainians who escaped their war-torn country now queue at the Polish border to return.
Three generations of women boarded a train home in Przemysl, with gran Zhanna Sinitsyna, 49, saying: “In my soul, Mykolaiv is my home.”
Officials revealed more than 220,000 have gone back to the country in the past two weeks, with the number growing by the day.
Some had responded to inspirational President Volodymyr Zelensky’s calls for Ukrainians to enlist in the war.
Oleksii Zvieriev was heading back to fight, saying: “Friends tell me they hear explosions all the time. I can’t stop worrying.”
Returning teacher Vira Lapchuk, 52, declared: “I feel no fear.”
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Help those fleeing conflict with The Sun’s Ukraine Fund
PICTURES of women and children fleeing the horror of Ukraine’s devastated towns and cities have moved Sun readers to tears.
Many of you want to help the five million caught in the chaos — and now you can, by donating to The Sun’s Ukraine Fund.
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For more information visit https://donate.redcross.org.uk/appeal/disaster-fund
