“What we know about life under Russian occupation also shows why our support for a free and independent Ukraine must continue. In the occupied territories, journalists are silenced, families divided, children grow up under relentless propaganda, Crimean Tatars face imprisonment for speaking their language or practicing their faith. Intimidation, fear, repression: this is life in the occupied territories,” Maria Malmer Stenergard, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Sweden

Maria Malmer Stenergard, in her speech, emphasized that thousands of Ukrainian children have been forcibly taken from their homes by Russia, separated from their parents, and sent to Russian institutions where they are subjected to ideological pressure. She stressed that the world cannot bring back the children who have already been killed by the war, but it must do everything possible to return every deported Ukrainian child home.