Putin's presidential planes deported Ukrainian children - US report; Italy to send new military aid to Kyiv

Italy was preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, said two sources close to the matter on Tuesday, in a renewed show of support for Kyiv from Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s rightist government.

Several Nato members were waiting for the new US administration to take office before making up their minds on Ukraine’s request for an invitation to join the US-led transatlantic alliance, said Latvia’s foreign minister on Tuesday. 

Putin-controlled aircraft deported Ukrainian children – US report

Russian presidential aircraft and funds were used in a programme that took children from occupied Ukrainian territories, stripped them of Ukrainian identity and placed them with Russian families, according to a report by Yale’s School of Public Health.

The US State Department-backed research, published on Tuesday, identified 314 Ukrainian children taken to Russia in the early months of the war in Ukraine as part of what it says was a systematic, Kremlin-funded programme to “Russify” them.

Reuters was unable to confirm the report’s findings independently.

In March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his child rights’ commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, for the alleged war crime of deportation of Ukrainian children.

At the time, Lvova-Belova said her commission acted on humanitarian grounds to protect children in an area of military hostilities. Lvova-Belova’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Kremlin said it could not respond to questions sent on Monday, citing a lack of time.

The new research, reported first by Reuters, offers details of the alleged deportation programme and individuals involved, including what its lead researcher said were new links to Putin.

The researcher, Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, said he was scheduled to present the findings to the UN Security Council on Wednesday. The US holds the rotating presidency of the 15-member body this month.

Raymond said the research offers evidence that would support additional charges by the ICC against Putin of “forcible transfer” of people from one national and ethnic group to another.

He further said the report proved “the deportation of Ukraine’s children is part of a systematic, Kremlin-led programme” to make them citizens of Russia.

Forcible transfer is a crime against humanity under international law. Because they must be widespread and systematic, crimes against humanity are considered more serious than war crimes.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, reacting to the report, said in a statement on X: “Ukraine is tirelessly working to ensure our children return home and that all those responsible for these heinous crimes are punished.”

The report said Ukrainian children brought to Russia had been subjected to “pro-state and militarised propaganda”, noting it had documented such “patriotic re-education” at all the facilities where the children were processed.

Reuters has documented the transfer of thousands of children to Russian camps, the forced naturalisation of Ukrainians and the involvement of Belarus in the programme.

Kyiv estimates around 19,500 children have been taken to Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea since the invasion. Lvova-Belova has challenged Kyiv’s numbers and asked it to provide evidence.

She previously said 380 orphans and children not in the custody of parents were placed with Russian foster families between April and October 2022.

Russia began taking Ukrainian children from occupied Ukrainian territories in the days before the invasion in February 2022, according to the report.

Russia’s Aerospace Forces and aircraft under the direct control of Putin’s office transported multiple groups of children from Ukraine on Russian Federation-flagged military transport planes between May and October 2022, according to the report.

Italy to approve more military aid for Ukraine this month

Italy was preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine, said two sources close to the matter on Tuesday, in a renewed show of support for Kyiv from Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s rightist government.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Italy has approved nine packages of aid for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s administration, including two Franco-Italian air defence systems known as SAMP/T.

The sources, who asked not to be named, said the government was likely to approve a 10th package by the end of this month, but declined to provide details. All shipments have so far been covered by state secrecy.

Meloni has been a supporter of Kyiv since taking office in late 2022 and has vowed to back Ukraine until the war ends, amid uncertainty over the future attitude of the US once President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January.

On Tuesday, Nato chief Mark Rutte urged members of the military alliance to step up military aid for Ukraine to strengthen its position should it enter into peace negotiations with Russia.

Under Italy’s presidency this year, the Group of Seven major democracies have repeatedly pledged support for Ukraine, condemned Russia’s war of aggression and pledged a $50-billion loan for Kyiv backed by frozen Russian assets.

Nato members wait for Trump before deciding on Ukraine invitation, says Latvia

Several Nato members were waiting for the new US administration to take office before making up their minds on Ukraine’s request for an invitation to join the US-led transatlantic alliance, said Latvia’s foreign minister on Tuesday.

Kyiv has urged Nato foreign ministers to issue an invitation at a meeting in Brussels this week, but movement appears unlikely amid opposition from some capitals and the transition in Washington.

Trump has said he will end Russia’s war with Ukraine in a day, but his team’s plans for Ukraine policy remain unclear.

“In principle, we as political leaders have agreed that Ukraine will be a member,” Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braže told Reuters on the sidelines of the meeting.

“The issue is what conditions when, and obviously that is where the alliance has to come together. All allies, currently, everybody is waiting for the new US administration to start working, so I think that is one aspect that is said or unsaid, but it’s a reality.”

Ukraine pushes for Nato membership despite expected rebuff

Ukraine declared it would not settle for anything less than Nato membership to guarantee its future security, even though the alliance was expected to sidestep Kyiv’s call for an immediate invitation at a foreign ministers’ meeting on Tuesday to join.

In a letter to his Nato counterparts ahead of the meeting, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said an invitation would remove one of Russia’s main arguments for waging its war — namely, preventing Ukraine from joining the alliance.

Although Nato has stated that Ukraine will join its ranks and its path to membership is “irreversible”, the alliance has not set a date or issued an invitation. Diplomats said there was currently no consensus among its 32 members to do so.

Some analysts and diplomats have suggested Ukraine could receive security guarantees from individual Western countries rather than from Nato as a whole.

Keith Kellogg, an ex-general recently named by Trump as his special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, co-authored a paper earlier this year that called for putting off Nato membership for Ukraine “for an extended period” in exchange for a “peace deal with security guarantees”.

But Ukraine insisted it would accept nothing less than Nato, citing its experience with a pact 30 years ago under which it relinquished nuclear arms in return for security assurances from major powers that proved worthless.

Brandishing a copy of that agreement, known as the Budapest Memorandum, as he arrived at the Nato meeting, Sybiha said: “This document failed to secure Ukrainian security and transatlantic security, so we must avoid [repeating] such mistakes.”

Nato chief Mark Rutte said the alliance was “building the bridge” to membership for Ukraine. But he said the most urgent issue was providing Kyiv with more arms to repel Russian forces as President Vladimir Putin was not interested in peace.

“The meeting in the next two days will very much concentrate on how to make sure that Ukraine, whenever it decides to enter into peace talks, will do so from positional strength,” Rutte told reporters before the meeting.

“And to get there, it is crucial that more military aid will be pumped into Ukraine.”

Rutte said he welcomed recent announcements of more military aid for Ukraine by the US, Germany, Sweden, Estonia, Lithuania and Norway. The US on Monday announced a new weapons package for Ukraine worth $725-million.

Ukraine sees Nato membership as the best guarantee of its future security since, under the alliance’s Article 5 mutual defence pact, members agree to treat an attack on one as an attack on all and come to one another’s aid.

Zelensky suggested on Friday in a Sky News interview that putting territory currently controlled by his government “under the Nato umbrella” would stop the “hot phase” of the war.

His comments came as Ukraine faces a tough winter on the battlefield, with Moscow’s troops advancing in the east and Russian airstrikes targeting the country’s hobbled energy grid.

Any decision on membership would depend above all on Nato’s predominant power, the US, so will soon be a matter for Trump, when he returns as US president next month.

Kremlin says Biden administration wants to keep war going

The Kremlin said on Tuesday that a US decision to send another weapons package to Ukraine worth $725-million showed that the outgoing Biden administration was determined to throw oil on the fire of the war in Ukraine to ensure the conflict kept going.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on Monday that the new aid would include Stinger missiles, ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (Himars), and drones and land mines.

Asked about the aid package, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “The current administration is pursuing its goals, its consistent line is to keep this war from slowing down.

“The [Biden] administration is doing everything it can to further add fuel to the fire. At the same time, this and other aid packages cannot change the course of events, cannot affect the dynamics on the frontlines.” DM