Russia has “embarked on a Kremlin-directed, deeply institutionalized project to abduct Ukrainian children and forcibly turn them into the next generation of Russians,” according to a new report.
The research, published by the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW), claims that Moscow made plans to relocate and Russify young Ukrainians in occupied territories even before it launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbor.
Officials in Kyiv have managed to document around 20,000 cases of children who have been deported to Russia during the conflict, but the real number is likely to be far higher.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and the country’s commissioner for children are wanted by the International Criminal Court for systematically kidnapping Ukrainian minors, but they deny any wrongdoing, claiming that Moscow has only removed youths from warzones for their own safety.
However, the ISW says that human rights activists have found official documents dated February 18, 2022—just days before the Kremlin’s tanks rolled into Ukraine—that “laid out plans to remove Ukrainian children from orphanages in occupied Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts” under the guise of humanitarian acts.
“These documents revealed that Russia planned to target vulnerable Ukrainian children, especially those without parental care, before the full-scale invasion had even begun,” it says.
It alleges that Russia’s legal system “made immediate accommodations for the intended influx of stolen Ukrainian children,” including simplifying the process of giving children without parental care Russian citizenship.
‘32 re-education camps’ for young Ukrainians
Minors were taken away from their homes in occupied areas “under a variety of guises, such as camps for their supposed rest, relaxation and rehabilitation,” the report claims. A plan to take 70 children out of the occupied Zaporizhzhia region and into camps was announced just last week, it added.
“Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab has confirmed that Russia is using at least 43 children’s camps throughout Russia to house deported children, at least 32 of which are explicitly ‘re-education’ facilities,” the report continued.
“Russia uses these camps to indoctrinate Ukrainian children, punishing them for their Ukrainian identities and forcibly instilling pro-Russian sentiment through carefully curated Kremlin-approved curricula and ‘military-patriotic’ training courses.”
The fate of “a significant proportion” of the children is “forced adoption” into Russian families, the report says, calling it a process that “strips Ukrainian children of their Ukrainian names and birthplaces.”
“There can be no true peace in Ukraine without the return of the children that Putin has stolen,” it concludes.
Earlier this month, the research project at Yale University—which is dedicated to tracking down child victims of forced deportation—had its funding cut by the U.S. government.
Nonetheless, U.S. President Donald Trump later raised the issue of the stolen minors in a phone call with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying he would “work closely” with both Russia and Ukraine to facilitate their return.
