Johanna Baxter

I thank the right hon. Lady for her intervention. While those Ukrainian women are fighting and sustaining their country, they are also the mothers to the 19,546 children who have been kidnapped by Russia. I want to tell the House why the fourth point of President Zelensky’s peace formula is so vital to ensuring a just end to this war. When Russian forces invaded the eastern oblasts in Ukraine, they deported and forcibly removed children from Ukraine to Russia. This is genocide in international law as we know it. In one case, a child only eight months old was taken by Russian forces. His new name and date of birth are unknown. Russia has consistently denied the existence of this child and thousands of others. Some of these children end up in Russia’s youth military, conscripted to fight a war against the country they were born in. This is a war crime. Before any ceasefire, the 19,546 stolen children of Ukraine must be returned home. Talk of tanks, bullets, drones and machine guns is unlikely to move the minds of people who live so far from Ukraine. It is the stories of the women who are playing an essential role in this war that will move those minds—it is their story, their fight for survival and their fight for the values of democracy that we in this House hold so dear, and must support with all our might. Slava Ukraini.