After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the international community was confronted with large-scale human rights violations. One of the most brutal aspects was the systematic deportation of Ukrainian children from the occupied territories to Russia, accompanied by their forced adoption or guardianship. According to a report by the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, this programme was deliberately organised and sanctioned at the highest levels of the Russian government.
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Initiation and evolution of the programme
Russia started deporting children from Ukraine even before the full-scale invasion. Since 2014, children from the occupied territories of Crimea and Donbas have been sent to camps for so-called ‘re-education’. This practice intensified after 2022, when the Russian military actively removed children from state institutions and from families in the war zone.
The removal of children was disguised as evacuation, sometimes under the pretext of a threat from the Ukrainian armed forces. However, the goal was to create conditions for their full integration into Russian society, which included changing their citizenship and indoctrinating them with pro-Russian narratives.
According to the study, 314 children were identified as having been taken to Russia. Of these:
- 208 children were placed in Russian families for foster care or adoption.
- 67 children were granted Russian citizenship.
- 46.6 per cent of the children recorded in the databases have siblings, but in some cases they were separated.
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Logistics of child trafficking
Children were transported to Russia by military aircraft and other means. They passed through temporary accommodation centres in border regions such as Rostov and Kursk, and later were moved to different regions of Russia. There, they were either placed under the care of Russian citizens or remained in specialised institutions where they were prepared for adoption.
Legislative changes introduced between May 2022 and March 2023 greatly simplified this process. These changes allowed Russian guardianship authorities to obtain the right to renounce Ukrainian citizenship on behalf of children.
Ukrainian children were placed in databases, such as Usynovite.ru, where they appeared as Russian citizens. These databases did not mention the Ukrainian origin of the children, making it difficult to identify them.
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The role of Russian officials
The key figures in the programme are President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova. They jointly coordinated the actions of local administrations, law enforcement agencies and social services to ensure the plan’s implementation. Lvova-Belova personally took one of the removed children under her care, which became a symbol of the programme.
Also playing a significant role were officials from the occupied territories who organised the ‘evacuation’ of the children, and members of the Russian Duma who changed legislation to facilitate the naturalisation of Ukrainian children as Russian citizens.
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International legal assessment
Russia’s actions against Ukrainian children may qualify as war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly genocide. They violate the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Putin and Lvova-Belova, who are suspected of involvement in the illegal deportation of children.
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