Madam President,

Excellencies,

The Russian ambassador predicated that this debate will consist of "hackneyed statements dictated by Brussels" - that's a lie.

I assure you that what you're about to hear, I wrote myself.

The Russian ambassador claims that Russia does not bomb civilian targets, that’s a second lie.

Two weeks ago I visited the Ukrainian city of Lviv, where a townhouse was hit with a Russian Kalibr missile. A man saw his wife and three daughters taken out of the rubble – dead. All of them were civilians, all of them lived far away from the frontline, and all of them were killed.

Th Russian ambassador has talked about children’s graveyard in Gaza, which is indeed a tragic situation. Well, Ukrainian children are targeted not only with bombs. Thousands have been kidnapped and taken into Russia where they are brainwashed in order to strip them of memories and national identity.

Russia claims these children are orphans left alone in a war-zone. Another lie. Many of them were separated from their parents – either by accident during the attacks, or deliberately by the aggressor’s army.

Independent reports revealed that – and I quote – “officials have deported Ukrainian children to Russia or Russian-held territories without consent, lied to them that they weren’t wanted by their parents, used them for propaganda, and given them Russian families and citizenship”.

Special camps offer the abducted children Russian “patriotic education” and a hotline was established to pair the minors with potential “foster families”, luring the latter with money. On top of that Mr. Putin signed a decree fast-tracking the process of granting Russian citizenship to stolen Ukrainian children.

This is not a collateral war damage. It was a plan devised before the war and ruthlessly executed. UN investigators concluded that these actions constitute war crimes.

In October 2022 the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin.

Ambassador Nebenzia and Russian propagandists like to refer to the democratically elected government of Ukraine as Nazis – as you’ve just heard.

It so happens that in Poland I live 3 kilometers from Potulice, the site of a former Nazi filtration camp during the Second World War. It’s known for the fact that thousands of children were imprisoned there – from Poland and the Soviet Union, from around Smoleńsk and Witebsk. Up to 800 of these children died but thousands were transferred west to be Germanized. Blond, blue-eyed  - Aryan - children deemed to be racially suitable.

I therefore have a few questions to the Russian ambassador and his superiors:

• How does what you are doing to Ukrainian kidnapped children differ from what German Nazis did to your children and ours?
• How many Russian officials have adopted stolen Ukrainian children following – as reported by the BBC – the example of Sergey Mironov, former Chairman of the Russian Federation Council?
• When will you return the remaining thousands of stolen Ukrainian children back to Ukraine?
• Do you know that stealing another country’s children is tantamount to genocide, as recently affirmed by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe?
• Do you remember that diplomats and propagandists of a genocidal regime are also criminals – as Soviet prosecutors argued at Nuremberg with reference to Ribbentrop and Streicher?

Permanent members of the UN Security Council are supposed to be guardians of peace and not to fight their wars with other people’s children. This is Russia’s shame that will not be forgiven or forgotten.

And by the way, since Ambassador Nebenzia denies the reality of Soviet-Nazi collaboration in the invasion of Poland in 1939, here is a picture of their joint parade. I’m sure you recognize the Soviet uniforms.

Thank you very much!