Verification within Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program
A video circulating on social media — including on Threads — shows former Dutch MEP Marcel de Graaff calling for the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Putin to be revoked. Instead, he suggests that an arrest warrant should be issued for Zelenskyi, claiming the Ukrainian president is organizing a child trafficking scheme to supply Ukrainian children to European pedophiles.
This claim is false. There is no evidence that the Ukrainian government is selling children abroad. The accusation was made by a former Member of the European Parliament who has repeatedly spread pro-Russian propaganda. Several MEPs condemned his statement.
Screenshot of the post
The post falsely refers to Marcel de Graaff as a current MEP. In fact, the Forum for Democracy party, of which he was a member, failed to collect enough signatures to participate in the June 2024 European elections. The video also went viral in December 2024, creating the false impression that the remarks were made recently. In reality, de Graaff made the statement back in March 2024, when he was still an MEP.
At the time, the European Parliament was discussing how to address the forced deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia. De Graaff’s views were not supported by his colleagues. Other MEPs in the chamber tried to drown him out with shouts, and his microphone was eventually turned off before he could finish.
According to Ukraine’s national informational bureau initiative “Children of War”, at least 19,500 Ukrainian children have been deported or forcibly relocated by Russia since 2022. The actual number may be significantly higher. Some of these children are held in special camps where they are subjected to ideological “reeducation” aimed at instilling hatred toward Ukraine and loyalty to the Putin regime. Resolutions by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and findings by an OSCE expert mission have recognized the abduction of Ukrainian children as a war crime and a form of genocide. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, and Vladimir Putin over the deportation of Ukrainian children.
Following de Graaff’s speech, Czech MEP Michaela Šojdrová said he was cut off to prevent the spread of Russian propaganda and emphasized that it is the Kremlin that is abducting Ukrainian children. After de Graaff’s statement, 51 MEPs signed a letter to European Parliament President Roberta Metsola calling for an investigation into how Russian disinformation is being spread within the European Parliament.
De Graaff has a history of promoting disinformation similar to Russian. At one session, he falsely claimed NATO was planning a nuclear strike on Russia. He frequently appeared on the “Voice of Europe” channel. In March 2024, the Czech government alleged that Russian operatives had paid certain European politicians to appear on the channel and promote pro-Kremlin narratives. The Czech Foreign Ministry said this was an attempt to undermine “Ukraine’s territorial integrity, sovereignty, and freedom”. While de Graaff is not officially under investigation, authorities did search his assistant’s home.
The claim that the Ukrainian government is selling children abroad is false and unsupported by any credible source. Such narratives are deliberately spread to discredit Ukraine internationally. We previously debunked a similar fake claiming that children from frontline regions were being sent abroad to be sold rather than to receive rehabilitation.
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