President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced a conference that will be devoted to the issue of the return of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia.

“There is one topic that is especially important to me, that is the case of abducted Ukrainian children. It is a horrible reminder of the darkest times of our history, what is happening there, to deport children. This is a war crime. We know today of 16,200 children that have been deported. Only 300 have returned so far. These criminal actions completely justify the arrest warrants issued by the ICC [to Russian President Vladimir Outin.]. In this field, in partnership with the Ukrainians, Prime Minister [of Poland, Mateusz] Morawiecki and I have launched an initiative aiming at bringing back these children that have been abducted by Russia. For that, we will organise a conference,” she said at the end of the first day of the European Council meeting in Brussels on Thursday.

Von der Leyen stressed that the work on the return of Ukrainian children "is at the very beginning." “We aim to pull together international pressure to take all possible measures to establish the whereabouts of these children. And we aim to assist UN bodies and the relevant international organisations in obtaining better and more complete information on the children who were deported to Russia. This includes also the children who were later adopted or transferred to Russian foster families. I am very thankful to the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, for having offered the support of the United Nations agencies. Because they have of course a significant experience on this very difficult topic,” the head of the European Commission said.

In addition, von der Leyen stated that the EU will continue to provide further assistance to Ukraine, recalling that just this week the EU allocated a new tranche of macro-financial assistance in the amount of EUR 1.5 billion. “We are once again increasing our military equipment support to Ukraine. And in this context, I also welcome the agreement in the Foreign Affairs Council on aiming to provide one million rounds of ammunition to Ukraine within the next 12 months. Of course, to achieve this, we have to massively ramp up production capacity of ammunition in Europe. We have discussed how to move forward on this as quickly as possible,” she said.

In this regard, von der Leyen said that the Commission intends to provide legislative proposals that will increase the production capacity of ammunition, in particular, financial support from the EU budget.