By Oleksand Kozhukhar
KYIV (Reuters) -&nbsp;Ukraine's&nbsp;President Volodymyr&nbsp;Zelenskiy&nbsp;called on the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) on Monday to&nbsp;do&nbsp;more&nbsp;about&nbsp;Ukrainians&nbsp;that Kyiv says have been forcefully deported to&nbsp;Russia&nbsp;and their fate once inside the country.
Bujar Osmani, Minister of Foreign Affairs of North Macedonia and the 2023&nbsp;OSCE&nbsp;Chairman-in-Office, visited Kyiv on Monday, with&nbsp;Zelenskiy&nbsp;saying the two talked&nbsp;about&nbsp;how to "make the&nbsp;OSCE&nbsp;effective".
Ukraine and its allies have accused&nbsp;Russia&nbsp;of large-scale deportation of&nbsp;Ukrainians&nbsp;since the start of the&nbsp;Russian invasion on Ukraine in February of 2022.
The U.S. State Department estimated last year that between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens, including 260,000 children, have been forcibly deported into&nbsp;Russian territory.
Russia&nbsp;denies deportations and says those arriving are war refugees. In November, the country's emergency ministry said that some 4.8 million&nbsp;Ukrainians, including 712,000 children, had arrived in&nbsp;Russia&nbsp;since February.
"The&nbsp;OSCE&nbsp;can significantly increase attention and act accordingly regarding the deportation of our people from the occupied territory to&nbsp;Russia,"&nbsp;Zelenskiy&nbsp;said in his nightly video address.
"No international organization has found the strength to gain access to the places of detention of our prisoners in&nbsp;Russia&nbsp;yet. This must be corrected."
Ukraine's&nbsp;National Information Bureau, which tracks missing and displaced children, says that as of Jan. 16 nearly 14,000 children had been deported.
The&nbsp;OSCE, the world's largest regional security organisation of 57 states, brings on equal footing the United States, all European states, including&nbsp;Russia&nbsp;and all states of the former Soviet Union, among others.
Russia&nbsp;has tried to undermine the organisation, saying in December that the body is losing its meaning and not focusing on matters closely related to security. It has been blocking the adoption of the&nbsp;OSCE&nbsp;budget.
The&nbsp;OSCE&nbsp;was also forced to close its monitoring mission in Ukraine after Moscow refused to extend the mandates of the organisation's field operations in the country.
&nbsp;
(Writing in Melbourne by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Michael Perry)

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