Child abductions and corruption plague Ukraine while Russia continues to exert pressure in Donbass

María Senovilla, journalist and contributor to Atalayar, spoke on ‘De cara al mundo’ about the latest events in Ukraine: from the kidnapping and transfer of minors to camps in North Korea to be indoctrinated and militarised by Russia, to a new case of corruption involving the Rada (Ukrainian parliament) and Kiev's denial of the complete takeover of Pokrovsk. 

Meanwhile, Russian troops continue to press forward on the Donbass front and international negotiations seek peaceful solutions amid growing political and humanitarian tension. 

We have denounced on this programme, you have done so, the abduction of Ukrainian children by Russia, but now it turns out that they are being taken to North Korea. 

Ukraine has gathered evidence of the existence of up to 165 children's camps located not only in North Korea, but also in the occupied territories of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. However, there are several in North Korea, where the Kremlin is reportedly sending these Ukrainian children and minors and where they are being given military training. 

It was the Ukrainian ombudsman, Dmitry Lubyments, who yesterday accused Russia of sending the abducted children to these camps, where they are being Russified and militarised. Several NGOs have sounded the alarm after learning of the existence of several Ukrainian children in camps, specifically in Son Doon, North Korea. 

These are international children's camps, where military training is promoted with a communist and anti-Western ideology, and it has been discovered that there were Ukrainian children there. The NGOs managed to contact two of these Ukrainian minors, aged between 12 and 16, who reported that they had learned in these North Korean camps how to destroy the Japanese military and that they had met war veterans who had fought against the United States. In other words, they had received military training and had been indoctrinated against the West. 

More than 19,000 children were abducted from the occupied territories of Ukraine during the first months of the invasion and transferred to other locations in Russia without the consent of their parents or relatives. Some managed to return home thanks to the courage of a few mothers who managed to enter Russia by going around it, obviously because they could not cross the border, through Europe, re-entering through the Baltic countries and going alone to Russia to find these minors. They managed to bring back more than a thousand children in this way, but the rest, the majority, remain under the control of the Kremlin. 

Some of these minors, upon reaching the age of 18, were also found to have been forcibly recruited and sent to the front lines in Ukraine to kill Ukrainians themselves. Others, we now know, are going to these types of camps to be militarised for some unknown future purpose. There have been several international attempts to have these minors returned to Ukraine. 

Since that letter from Melania Trump, which the US president handed to Putin during their meeting in Alaska. And there has also been a resolution passed by the UN this week, demanding that Russia return all deported minors and those who are being treated as war trophies. 

We have also reported on these microphones that some of these children had been included on Russian websites where Russian families could adopt them and even choose characteristics such as hair or eye colour. These children are being adopted à la carte, while in many cases their parents are waiting for them in Ukraine, parents who must be feeling a pain and despair that is difficult to describe. 

Maria, we are awaiting the outcome of the political negotiations in Florida, but President Zelensky is facing a new corruption case. 

That's right, Ukraine's anti-corruption offices, NABU and SAPO, have just uncovered a new corruption case allegedly led by a member of the Rada, which is similar to the Spanish Congress. The statement has been very brief, and not all the details are available yet. NABU and SAPO, together with the Ukrainian Security Service, have dismantled a criminal group led by a popular Ukrainian MP. The investigation is ongoing. 

That is the brief statement. There is already speculation that it could be MP Skorhod, who is from Zelensky's political party, but that is just speculation. She is said to have worked for the Russian special services for a long time and to have been involved in several controversies for making statements that went against Ukraine's interests, despite being a member of the Ukrainian Rada. 

It might seem like a bad time for Zelensky to be hit with a new corruption case in the midst of these complicated peace negotiations, but I can tell you that young people, especially young people, many people, but the youngest, have applauded the uncovering of a new corruption case after the one that came out a few weeks ago, in which the president's right-hand man, Andrey Yermak, was implicated for allegedly embezzling funds from atomic energy contracts and pocketing the money. Young people are very tired of this corruption that is widespread throughout Ukraine. 

They are also fed up with the war and see that these cases and these corrupt political elites are not helping the people at this delicate time to achieve peace and, above all, to not benefit from this corruption at such a delicate moment. 

When they tried to close these two anti-corruption agencies, the people took to the streets and occupied the Maidan for days, even in the midst of war, even in the midst of attacks and air raid sirens, they continued to fill that square to demand that these anti-corruption offices not be closed. At that time, an attempt was made to pass a law to close them, on the grounds that they had not achieved results. 

As we have seen, what was happening was that these investigations were being carried out over a very long period of time and it seems that they are now beginning to bear fruit. Young people here in Kiev applauded the fact that these cases are being uncovered one by one because they are very tired of this corruption, of this scourge that they say is a legacy of the Soviet regime and that it is time to leave it behind in order to look towards Europe. 

Maria, on the front line, Ukraine denies that Russia has completely taken the strategic point of Pokrovsk. 

Pokrovsk, yes. This week, they published a photo and a video to international agencies of several soldiers planting a large Russian flag in the centre of Pokrovsk, and the Kremlin's troops said that they already controlled the city completely. 

I was able to contact several combat positions where I was working recently on that front, in Pokrovsk. These positions are dedicated to intelligence and aerial reconnaissance by drone, and they assured me that there are still Ukrainian soldiers, several hundred Ukrainian soldiers, inside Pokrovsk in strategic positions, preventing the city from being completely taken. 

This reminds me of when the towns of Soledad and Bajmut were taken. Although Russian troops controlled most of the city, there were still several positions at the exit, several streets that were still controlled by Ukrainian forces, thus preventing an exponential advance by the Russians. In this case, it would be in the direction of Pabloraz, towards the city of Dobropilliev, to complete the capture of northern Donetsk, which Russia has been desperately trying to accelerate for weeks. 

From these combat positions on the Pokrovsk Front, which were still far from the soldiers who were resisting abandoning the city and, among other things, what they were achieving by not allowing Russia to completely take this stronghold, is to prevent the encirclement of the city of Mirnograd, which is next to Pokrovsk, where there are also forces fighting, and in this way maintain the front line to slow down the Russian advance in this part of the Donbas as much as possible.