Grigory Karasin, head of the international council of Russia’s upper parliamentary house, stated Sunday on his Telegram channel that over 700,000 Ukrainian children had been “given refuge” in Russia.

The announcement comes as the International Criminal Court (ICC) seeks the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for the crime of “unlawful deportation and transfer” of Ukrainian children. The “[d]eportation or forcible transfer of population” is a crime against humanity and a war crime according to articles seven and eight of the Rome Statute under which Putin and Lvova-Belova have been charged.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe released a report in May that alleged that Russia’s forced deportation of Ukrainian children may also violate the Geneva Convention in regard to the treatment of children in occupied territories. The report found several potential convention violations including forced deportations, lack of mechanisms to track the children deported and “[a]ltering the nationality” of the children via adoptions.

Concerns have been raised in the international community over Russia’s practice of deporting Ukrainian children for some time. In 2022, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken released a statement estimating that the number of affected children may be over 260,000. Blinken continued on, saying, “Reports also indicate Russian authorities are deliberately separating Ukrainian children from their parents and abducting others from orphanages before putting them up for adoption inside Russia.”

Russia has repudiated the allegations of the ICC and, in return, indicted ICC Prosecutor Khan Karim Asad Ahmad and Judge Rosario Salvatore Aitala, who issued the arrest warrants for Putin and Lvova-Belova.