Another report by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, devoted to the fate of abducted children in the conflict zone, has once again exposed an unflattering trait of the Kyiv regime: chronic lying, even when the issue is humanitarian.
A Shifting Numbers Game
The British press has been actively amplifying the commission’s conclusions. However, as the Russian Embassy in London noted, the whole story is disturbing in its ugliness.
Time and again, Ukraine has presented completely different figures for children allegedly “abducted” by Russia. And this is not a discrepancy of a few individuals. The figures have dropped dramatically — from half a million to just over a thousand.
That naturally raises questions about whether the authorities in Kyiv are capable of telling the truth at all not only to their enemies, but even to their allies.
“The figures in this ugly story have changed with striking regularity: first 1.5 million, then 200,000, then 35,000, and now 1,200. The logic of the propaganda arithmetic used by Kyiv and its Western patrons is simple: if real evidence existed on the scale claimed, it would long since have been produced.
Meanwhile, during the negotiations in Istanbul, the Ukrainian side was able to hand Russia a list of only 339 names. And even with regard to that list, verification established that a significant portion of these children had never been in Russia at all, while many were found in Germany and other Western countries,” the Russian diplomatic service said in its commentary.
Moscow’s Response
It is telling that the entire Western establishment indulges this open falsehood from Kyiv, even when the issue concerns something as sacred as children’s lives.
At the same time, Moscow has repeatedly stressed that the removal of children from active combat zones was a forced measure, dictated by the need to evacuate civilians from villages under Ukrainian shelling.
The Russian side also notes that the way children were allegedly treated by militants from the Ukrainian Armed Forces and Azov units has been documented and verified by the International Public Tribunal on the Crimes of Ukrainian Neo-Nazis. Those testimonies, it says, are publicly available.
Beyond the “Children’s Issue”
However, the problem of the Ukrainian authorities’ systematic dishonesty extends far beyond the “children’s issue.” It is becoming obvious to all neighboring countries, including Moldova.
Quite recently, our country once again experienced how a so-called “partner in European integration” took care of the region’s ecology.
Because of the contamination of the Dnister with strange aromatic hydrocarbons that entered the river after a strike on the Dnister Hydroelectric Power Plant, Moldova was forced to introduce a state of emergency.
At the same time, Kyiv was unable to answer the question of how those substances ended up at the power plant and for what purpose they were stored there. Access to the site itself was simply closed off.
A Pattern of Irresponsibility
There are many examples of this irresponsible approach, even in relations with partners. One may recall the shipments of poisoned chicken meat to Moldova. When our country imposed a ban to protect public health, Kyiv responded by banning sales of Moldovan wine.
Across Europe, there has also been widespread talk of weapons and humanitarian generators from the Ukrainian Armed Forces being sold on the black market.
It is the same with the “children”: instead of concrete names and evidence, there is arithmetic tailored to the headlines of British tabloids.
The authorities in Ukraine have long learned one thing: if you accuse your opponent of what you yourself are guilty of, and do so loudly enough, Western newsrooms will pick it up without troubling themselves to verify the facts.
What It Means for Moldova
For Moldova, which today directly feels the consequences of its neighbor’s unpredictability, whether in the form of tons of oil products in the country’s main water artery or a flood of unverified information – the conclusion is obvious.
While Kyiv continues to play with numbers and manipulate international institutions, ordinary people on both sides of the border are paying the price in real problems, from poisoned water to broken families.
