Polish foreign minister likens Russian kidnapping of Ukrainian children to Nazi crimes in UN speech

In a speech at the United Nations, Poland’s foreign minister has likened Russia’s abduction of Ukrainian children to Nazi Germany’s crimes against Soviet and Polish children during the Second World War. He also reminded Moscow of Soviet collaboration with Nazi Germany during the war.

Radosław Sikorski was speaking at a UN Security Council meeting to discuss the situation in Ukraine. He addressed his remarks to Russian ambassador Vasily Nebenzya, who had just made a speech in which he referred to the Ukrainian government as the “neo-Nazi Kyiv regime”.

The Polish foreign minister noted that “Ukrainian children are being targeted [by Russia] not only with bombs; thousands have been kidnapped and taken into Russia, where they are brainwashed in order to strip them of memories and their national identity”.

Sikorski pointed to independent reports describing a deliberate Russian policy of abducting children and then seeking to Russify them, including in special camps offering “Russian patriotic education”.

He noted that UN investigators have concluded that these constitute war crimes and that last year the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for the unlawful deportation of children from Ukraine.

The Polish foreign minister then explained that his own home in Poland is just three kilometres from the site of the former German-Nazi Potulice concentration camp, where thousands of abducted Polish and Soviet children were imprisoned. Many died there but others were selected for “Germanisation” and transferred west.

“How does what you are doing to Ukrainian kidnapped children differ from what German Nazis did to your children and ours?” Sikorski asked Nebenzya.

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“Do you know that stealing another country’s children is tantamount to genocide?” he continued. “Do you remember that diplomats and propagandists of a genocidal regime are also criminals, as Soviet prosecutors argued at Nuremberg?”

Sikorski finished his speech by noting that Russia denies that the Soviet Union collaborated with Nazi Germany in the invasion of Poland in 1939. The Polish minister then held up a picture of a joint parade by Soviet and German troops to remind them of the reality that the two countries had been allies.

Poland has been among Ukraine’s strongest allies since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. It has regularly condemned Russian war crimes and called for international investigations. Last year, Poland launched a joint initiative with the European Commission to trace Ukrainian children abducted by Russia.

The Ukrainian government’s official database lists over 19,500 children as having been “deported and/or forcibly displaced” by Russia during the ongoing war.

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.