A Belgian father has alleged that the Russian authorities are currently engaged in an attempt to "denazify" his young daughter, who he claims has been living in Saint Petersburg with her Russian mother since 2016.
In an interview with La Dernière Heure (DH), Pascal Driess, a 50-year-old private jet pilot, added that he had not heard from his eight-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Marie-Élisabeth Driess, nor her mother, Elena — Pascal's ex-wife — in almost two years.
"My ex-wife has completely gone off the radar," Pascal explained. "I had addresses and mobile phone numbers. No one picks up the phone anymore... When will I see my daughter again, and in what condition?"
Pascal then drew a comparison between his daughter's situation and that of the thousands of Ukrainian children who are alleged to have been abducted by Russian forces and brought to Russia to be "re-educated" or "denazified" over the past year.
"In my eyes, the Ukrainian children they are deporting are spoils of war for them," he said. "And the Western children they are holding back, revenge loot... The Russians brainwash them and... re-educate them in the idea that Russia is a victim of the decadent West which wants to destroy the values of the great Orthodox Russia. This allows the highest Russian authorities to tell ordinary Russians that the nation is 'saving' these children from the 'Nazis'."
'There are others'
Although he doesn't have any precise data concerning the number of Western minors currently being held incommunicado in Russia, Pascal is aware of at least three other Belgian parents who are in a similar situation to him: "Marie-Élisabeth is not the only one. There are other Western minors who will be difficult to find later on."
Indeed, it is for these reasons that Pascal recently created an NGO — the Marie-Elisabeth International Child Abduction Foundation — whose stated aim is to "provide support to families and minors who have been victims of illegal parental displacement from Europe to the Russian Federation, and vice versa."
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However, Pascal noted that one major problem facing his organisation is that many pro-Western Russians have left Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year.
"Russian institutions are no longer communicating," he said. "Russians who had favourable feelings for Europeans left the country, most of them to Turkey, Dubai, Georgia, Armenia or Egypt. Those who stayed are playing it safe, which we can understand. We no longer have information from within."
He added: "Since the conflict, the Russian Federation has withdrawn from the international conventions relating to parental abductions. Even if they worked poorly, at least they existed. Now, even that is over."
