H.E. Ms Larysa Gerasko:

I thank the Senator for her questions. First, we do not discuss Ireland’s neutrality. We, of course, know it relates to Ireland’s internal affairs. Sometimes, there is a misunderstanding, or even confusion, between the concepts of neutrality and security. We are talking about security and the security of Europe. Every country, whether it is neutral or not, has to defend itself and think about security.

To take Ukraine as an example, before the first invasion by Russia in 2014, Ukraine was a neutral country and neutrality was enshrined in the constitution. Moreover, I mentioned the 1994 Budapest memorandum, which is very well known. Ukraine signed this memorandum for security guarantees and, in turn, we gave up the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world. Imagine how naive Ukraine was. We were such a peaceful nation that we gave up nuclear weapons and received nothing in return, because the security guarantees we thought we got ended up being meaningless. Russia, one of the state guarantors of the memorandum, invaded Ukraine. That is a general thought.

With regard to the International Criminal Court, while I know the ICC is under pressure, it is important that it still investigates each case concerning the abduction or forceful adoption of Ukrainian children. The President of Ukraine, in his address to members of the coalition on bringing Ukrainian children back to Ukraine, stated that each and every case of illegal and forcible adoption should be investigated and punished.

It prevents other people from engaging in illegal adoptions. It does not matter if it is a Russian family. Ordinary people would know these kids are from Ukraine and have been forcibly deported, so there is no way to adopt them because you would be punished.

On the Senator's second question, there are some programmes. As she can imagine, our prosecutors' offices are working very hard because of all the crimes committed by Russia and Russian soldiers, and not only in Ukraine. They are documenting such cases. There are many different programmes to help appropriate Ukrainian authorities to document such crimes. Some delegations of Ukrainian prosecutors and judges visited Ireland as part of an EU programme and learned how to do it properly.