By Philip Pullella and Costas Pitas
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, assigned by Pope Francis to help bring peace to Ukraine, will discuss repatriating children who Kyiv and others say have been deported by Russia with U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington as part of a three-day visit.
Zuppi will meet Biden on Tuesday at the White House where they will discuss the suffering caused by the war, humanitarian aid and “the Papal See’s focus on repatriating Ukrainian children forcibly deported by Russian officials,” the White House said.
The Kyiv government estimates nearly 19,500 children have been taken to Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea since February 2022, in what it condemns as illegal deportations.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) in March issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine.
In June, Ukraine brought its first charges over allegations of the deportation of Kherson orphans against a Russian politician and two suspected Ukrainian collaborators, following a wider investigation carried out in cooperation with the ICC.
Russia, whose forces control parts of Ukraine’s east and south following its February 2022 invasion, has denied abducting children and has previously said they have been transported away for their own safety.
Grigory Karasin, head of the international committee in the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, said earlier this month that Russia had brought some 700,000 children from the conflict zones in Ukraine into Russian territory.
Zuppi has previously spoken about working on a “mechanism” that could ensure the return of children and that he had personally discussed the issue with Francis.
Last month, Zuppi visited Moscow, where he met with the head of Russia’s influential Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, and with Russia’s Children’s Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova.
Earlier in June, he visited Kyiv and met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Zelenskiy, who met the pope in May, has asked the Vatican to back his unconditional peace plan, which he has said is not open to negotiation. The plan calls for restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the withdrawal of Russian troops and cessation of hostilities, and the restoration of Ukraine’s state borders.
(Reporting by Philip Pullella and Costas Pitas; Additional reporting by Federica Urso; Editing by Grant McCool)
