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LONDON: Britain on Wednesday imposed sanctions on 11 more individuals and entities affiliated with the Russian state, targeting those involved in what it said were Moscow’s attempts to forcibly deport and indoctrinate Ukraine’s children.
Ukraine says that more than 19,500 children have been taken to Russia or Russian-occupied territory during the war without the consent of family or guardians, calling the abductions a war crime that meets the UN treaty definition of genocide. Moscow has said it was protecting vulnerable children from a war zone.
“The Kremlin’s policy of forced deportations, indoctrination and militarization of Ukrainian children is despicable,” foreign minister David Lammy said in a statement, setting out Britain’s latest round of sanctions against Russia for the war in Ukraine.
Organizations such as the Akhmat Kadyrov Foundation which runs re-education programs for Ukrainian children and teenagers, subjecting them to militaristic training, and its president, Aymani Nesievna Kadyrova, are among those targeted, the statement said. The sanctions include asset freezes, travel bans and other penalties.
The Russian embassy in London said the sanctions were unlawful and based on “unfounded claims” from Ukraine about the forcible transfer of children.
“We call upon the UK authorities to refrain from making baseless accusations in future and to avoid hindering the efforts aimed at protecting the rights and interests of minors,” it said in a post on social media.
In March, a report by the United Nations Human Rights Office said Russia had inflicted unimaginable suffering on millions of Ukrainian children and violated their rights since its full scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022.
Kadyrova’s son Ramzan, head of Russia’s Muslim Chechnya republic who has sent large contingents of troops to boost Russian ranks in Ukraine, published a statement in Russian via his channel on Telegram messaging app in defense of his mother.
“She always helps victims of war and supports the poor and disadvantaged around the world,” said the translated comments, which also said that she was not involved in politics.
“These actions prove that the West is guided neither by morality nor by law, but acts out of hatred and Russophobia ... This is the lowest level of rotten Western politics,” he added.
In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued warrants for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his children’s rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova related to the abduction of Ukrainian children. Russia denounced the warrants as “outrageous and unacceptable.”

NURGAL, Afghanistan: Four nights and days since the earth shook and levelled his home in eastern Afghanistan, Khan Zaman Hanafi thought he had endured the worst, until the rain came.

The 35-year-old farmer says his village has “been forgotten by the government and aid groups.”

“It’s raining and we’re being left to live in the open,” he told AFP from a cornfield where he has been sleeping with his family, away from the wreckage of their village, Shelt.

In these valleys — once known as smuggling routes and corridors for fighters moving to and from Pakistan before the Taliban returned to power — mud houses are built into the mountainsides, stacked one above another.

On Sunday night, when the magnitude 6.0 quake struck, the homes collapsed in a giant domino effect.

Kunar province, famous for its forests, was the hardest hit by the quake — one of the deadliest in the country’s history, having already claimed over 2,200 lives.

’IT’S CHAOS’

“In Shelt, there were 350 houses and 300 in Mama Gol, and we heard only 68 tents were distributed,” said Hanafi, adding he has yet to see one.

“This place is unlivable, but we have no choice,” he said. “We are poor. We want the government and aid groups to help us rebuild our homes.”

But the Taliban authorities have already admitted they cannot cope alone.

For their part, the United Nations and NGOs say their resources are already overstretched, as they face a sharp drop in international aid and the return of millions of migrants expelled from neighboring countries.

For now, authorities are sending bulldozers onto Kunar’s steep slopes to clear the few narrow, winding roads as quickly as possible.

Khan Saeed Deshmash was spared from the rough roads, his injuries meaning he was flown by helicopter, along with a dozen injured relatives, from his village of Minjegale, to a hospital in Jalalabad, the capital of neighboring Nangarhar province.

The 47-year-old grain farmer lost six family members in the quake, along with all his cows and sheep.

“Everyone is traumatized, it’s chaos — we can’t even think straight anymore,” he said.

EVERY HOUSE DESTROYED 

Only one thing is certain now, Deshmash said: “It’s no longer possible to live in these villages. There are still aftershocks, every house is destroyed, and we need to be relocated elsewhere.”

But Abdul Alam Nezami, 35, said he wants to stay in his village of Massoud, where he inherited his father’s cornfields.

He would be starting from zero to repair everything that was brought down in the quake or damaged by landslides and rockfall, in a country where around 85 percent of people already live on a dollar a day according to the UN.

Work is underway to clear the blocked roads, but “the irrigation canals and water reservoirs also need to be rebuilt so the harvests are not completely lost,” Nezami said.

For now, he is focused on his immediate living situation.

“There is only one tent for two to three families, and some leak when it rains,” he said.

And the rain has not stopped, with downpours “last night and again this morning.”

In Mazar Dara too, the tarpaulins salvaged from the rubble to create makeshift shelters “have holes” and “don’t protect us from the rain,” said 48-year-old farmer Zahir Khan Safi.

“We keep them for the children,” he told AFP, but they still end up in wet clothes. “And have nothing to change into.”