Since the start of the Ukrainian invasion, Moscow has deported more than 19,500 Ukrainian children. Upon arrival in Russia, these children would be forced to undergo military training.
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More than 19,500 Ukrainian children have been kidnapped by Russian forces since the start of Moscow’s war of aggression against kyiv. To date, only about 1,000 have been returned to Ukraine, according to Ukrainian Human Rights Commissioner Dmytro Lubinets.
Moscow began its deportation campaign during the first invasion of Ukraine in 2014. The first case of a Ukrainian child forcibly taken to Russia was recorded in annexed Crimea. Ten years later, deportations continue in the Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia.
The main difficulty facing the Ukrainian authorities in finding the deported children is tracing their journey once on Russian soil.
“The Russian Federation never gave us any information about Ukrainian children. I tried to appeal to international organizations. I sent a large number of requests and letters to all UN organizations, to the International Committee of the Red Cross to try to find information on Ukrainian children, but without success”, explains Dmytro Lubinets.
So far, Ukraine has managed to find solid information on 19,546 children confirming that they were indeed forcibly deported to Russia.
“The list includes orphans, children without parents, children with parents and Ukrainian parents”specifies Dmytro Lubinets.
What happens to Ukrainian children once they are taken to Russia?
Once Ukrainian children are deported to Russia, local authorities try to erase any connection with their country of origin. Children undergo “brainwashing” and their official documents are altered so that their loved ones cannot find them and take them home.
“Passports, birth certificates, all information is also changed in Russia” explains Dmytro Lubinets.
The children are then forced to undergo military training.
“All Ukrainian children must be members of military youth organizations of the Russian Federation, even girls, you know”adds the Ukrainian Commissioner for Human Rights.
“Here we see all the details of the colonial policy of the Russian Federation towards Ukraine. And I really believe that the main goal of the Russians for the deportation of Ukrainian children is to train a new generation of ‘Russian army’.
Putin faces trial before the ICC
In March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Children’s Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova for the illegal deportation of children and the illegal transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia.
The United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom have all sanctioned Maria Lvova-Belova for her alleged role in the affair.
The deportation campaign led by Moscow can even be qualified as genocide according to Dmytro Lubinets. “Genocide is a war crime that has five elements. One of them is the forcible transfer of children from one ethnic group to another. This is true genocide.”
Moscow denies all accusations that the children were forcibly moved.
ADVERTISEMENTMaria Lvova-Belova even declared that she “adopted” a teenager from Mariupol, a Ukrainian city destroyed and taken by Russia in the spring of 2022.
According to Dmytro Lubinets, Kyiv has information indicating that this is not the only case, and that “other heads of state of the Russian Federation took part”.
While Kyiv authorities claim they only have information on thousands of Ukrainian children deported to Russia, Maria Lvova-Belova revealed last July that around 700,000 Ukrainian minors had been “transferred” in Russia since the start of the large-scale invasion.
Dmytro Lubinets warns that there could be even more children at risk: “Now that more than 20% of Ukrainian territory is under Russian occupation, 1.5 million Ukrainian children live on this territory. And the Russian Federation can deport all these children to the Russian side”.
ADVERTISEMENTWhen asked what Kyiv can do to prevent this, he says there is only one way. “We must liberate the entire territory of Ukraine,” said Dmytro Lubinets. “Only then will Ukraine be able to establish a new mechanism for receiving information about deported children, and only then will the real number be revealed, and it will be significantly higher .”
