MEPs condemn ‘deportations’ of Ukrainians

Members of the European Parliament have condemned what they name the mass deportation of hundreds of Ukranian residents to Russia, as they remembered the victims of the identical Soviet actions years in the past.

Half demonstration, half memorial, the occasion outdoors the EU establishment in Brussels was organised to lift consciousness of the problem.

One of many MEPs who organised the occasion says the Kremlin is just not even making an attempt to cover its actions.

“The Russians themselves, they aren’t hiding this,” Rasa Juknevičienė advised Euronews. “They’re telling the tales that they changed many hundreds, lots of of hundreds Ukrainians, together with kids with out their dad and mom and they’re adopting them. They’re about to have new Russians”.

In June 1941, the Soviet Union forcibly uprooted hundreds of individuals from territories that it occupied, together with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.

The demonstrators say Moscow is doing precisely the identical factor greater than 80 years later.

Juozas Olekas, a former Lithuanian MEP, warned Euronews of the risks of permitting the Kremlin to as soon as once more do the identical factor in Ukraine.

“That is very unbelievable that that is occurring these days. However it is extremely harmful to neglect about this aggression, about this brutality,” Olekas mentioned.

“Folks from Ukraine are struggling within the deportation camps in very totally different locations in Russia. I’m feeling from my coronary heart that it’s actually harmful for the way forward for Europe if we permit to make use of that brutality in Europe. As we speak in Ukraine, possibly tomorrow in Italy. Who is aware of?”

Moscow claims that at the least a million Ukrainians have chosen to maneuver to Russia because the invasion started on 24 February. 

Kyiv, nevertheless, says that these individuals have been forcibly uprooted from their nation.