The United Nations Human Rights Council demanded Tuesday that Russia provide access to and information about Ukrainian children and other civilians forcibly transferred to territory under its control.
The top UN rights body passed a resolution demanding that Moscow "cease the unlawful forced transfer and deportation of civilians and other protected persons within Ukraine or to the Russian Federation".
The text, which passed with 28 of the 47 council members voting in favour, 17 abstaining and only China and Eritrea opposed, highlighted in particular the transfer of "children, including those from institutional care, unaccompanied children and separated children".
The Kremlin's alleged deportation of tens of thousands of children from war-ravaged Ukraine to Russia or areas occupied by Russian forces has been a hot-button topic throughout the nearly six-week session of the Geneva-based council.
Kyiv maintains that more than 16,000 Ukrainian children have been deported to Russia as of February this year.
"The scope and brutality of Russia's atrocities in Ukraine are simply beyond any human comprehension," Ukrainian ambassador Yevheniia Filipenko told the council.
"The most appalling of them is the forcible transfer... of children to Russia for their re-education and adoption," she said.
"The forcible transport, transfer and deportation of Ukraine's children is truly sickening," agreed US ambassador Michele Taylor.
China however pushed the resolution to a vote, with representative Li Xiaomei slamming the text as an "instrumentalisation of human rights issues".
She insisted the council would have been better off supporting "dialogue between Russia and Ukraine" and should "stop spreading oil over fire".
- War crime -
Tuesday's resolution, which also prolonged for another year a high-level investigation into violations committed in the context of the war in Ukraine, demanded that Russia provide access to all those transferred.
It said Moscow should grant "staff of established international human rights and humanitarian mechanisms unhindered, immediate, sustained and safe access" to those transferred.
And it called for "reliable and comprehensive information about the number and the whereabouts of these civilians, and ensure their dignified treatment and their safe return".
The text also called for "unhindered, immediate and sustained access" to be granted to all prisoners of war and anyone "unlawfully detained".
The high-level Commission of Inquiry (COI), established by the council a year ago to investigate abuses since Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, concluded in its first report last month that the forced transfers of Ukrainian children amounted to a war crime.
The investigators, who with Tuesday's vote have been given another year to push ahead with their work, said they were also probing allegations that those transfers could amount to genocide.
And they highlighted numerous other Russian violations in Ukraine which they said amounted to war crimes, including killings, torture and rape.
They also warned that systematic attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure and a pattern of widespread and systematic torture could amount to crimes against humanity.
A day after the COI published its report, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin on the war crime accusation of unlawfully deporting Ukrainian children.
- Special rapporteur for Russia -
Amid a long line of resolutions passed on the last day of its main annual session, the UN rights council also agreed Tuesday to appoint Bulgarian human rights expert Mariana Katzarova to monitor the situation inside Russia.
The move came after the council last September decided a so-called special rapporteur was needed for Russia, amid concerns over an intensifying domestic crackdown by Moscow as its war rages in Ukraine.