Ukraine official sources now claim that around 500,000 Ukrainian nationals have been forcibly displaced to Russia, among them over 100,000 children. The destination for these abductions are, purportedly, northern Russia and the Sakhalin island, and the detainees are being given papers that prevent them from leaving Russia for the next two years.
This is nothing short of kidnapping, and it might be a lot worse than that. Parallels to Soviet prison labor camps and Chinese reeducation camps are painfully easy to draw.
Even though Ukraine is at war and naturally chooses to present information that is beneficial for receiving help from other countries, there is no obvious reason for them to inflate these numbers, or make up a story like this one. Ukraine is, contrary to Russia, an open society with a free press, and foreign observers are free to roam the country as they please. Thus, any "Big Lies", like the ones being spouted daily by Russia, would soon be exposed and generate a lot of pushback. The alternative, that this is essentially a true story, is almost too ugly to fathom, but it seems very likely.
Russia needs to go. Twice over in the past century they have failed to build a society that has any chance of existing peacefully alongside other countries, and instead chosen a path of totalitarian rule and expansionistic imperialism, asserting dominance over their neighbors through invasion and intimidation. Russia is a threat to peace, to democracy, to decency and honesty, to diversity, tolerance and freedom, and to virtually everything else that is good in the world.
It deserves repeating: Russia needs to go. They have lost their right to govern themselves as an independent country, and need to be put under some kind of supervision from the international community. Until they can demonstrate at least a basic respect of human rights and international law, they are a danger to us all.
