Since the start of the war against Ukraine, Russia has taken thousands of children and young people out of the country. This is often justified on humanitarian grounds. But in the meantime, aid organizations and research teams are certain that the kidnappings are systematic and probably constitute war crimes.
Addressing the UN General Assembly this week, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba raised an issue that is a particularly perfidious part of Russia's war against his country: the systematic kidnapping of Ukrainian children to Russia and their deliberate alienation from their country of origin.
According to Kuleba, Russia has already deported thousands of children to be adopted by Russian families and re-educated as Russians. "This is genocide and we are facing it today," said the minister.
Since the beginning of the war a year ago, there have been repeated reports of Ukrainian children and young people "disappearing" in Russian-held areas. In September 2022, Moscow confirmed that it had brought 1,800 orphaned children from Ukraine to Russia. The Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale University in the US recently assumed that around 6,000 Ukrainian children were abducted to Russia, and the Ukrainian government put the number at least 14,000. There were corresponding reports of kidnappings from occupied areas in Cherson or from Mariupol, among others. The numbers are difficult to verify.
Moscow has repeatedly denied that the kidnappings were deliberate and portrays the kidnappings as an "act of rescue" to get them out of the combat zones. Minors are often brought to Russia on the grounds that they can receive medical treatment or recuperate there. Both would be possible without the Russian attacks in Ukraine.
The US-based think tank Institute for the Study of War looked into the kidnappings of minors in November 2022 and found that in Russia the forced adoption of Ukrainian children by Russian families is openly promoted. According to a multi-part documentary series by Russian military bloggers about several children from Donbass, Russian officials "evacuated" more than 150,000 children from Donbass in 2022 alone.
The child rights commissioner of the Russian Federation, Maria Lvova-Belova, played a decisive role in the deportations. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who also operates combat units in Ukraine, said he worked with Lvova-Belova to bring "difficult teenagers" to Chechnya from various Russian regions and the occupied regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. He then gave these minors, who are often declared orphans even though they have relatives, "military-patriotic education".
Behind these formulations is probably the military training of adolescents. NGOs report that youth who were trafficked to Chechnya after Crimea was annexed in 2014 are now fighting on the pro-Russian side against Ukraine.
The Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale University in the US sees a "systematic program for the re-education and adoption of Ukrainian children" by Russia. According to the researchers, there is a network of at least 40 child custody centers that stretches across Russia. The research team had scoured social media posts, news reports, government announcements, and Russian news services, looking for patterns and connections that might otherwise go unnoticed. According to Yale Humanitarian Research Lab executive director Nathaniel Raymond, the research shows that there was a clear concept, logistical planning and a clear chain of command behind the abductions. "Some cases are adoptions, some are summer camp programs where the kids were supposed to go home and never did, and some are re-education camps," Raymond said.
The UN children's aid organization Unicef has long observed that orphanages are of particular interest to the Russian side. In June 2022, Unicef expressed concern over plans by Russian authorities to "allow the movement of children from Ukraine to families in the Russian Federation, which do not appear to involve family reunification steps or respect the best interests of the child". Lvova-Belova quite frankly spoke about the fact that she herself adopted a boy from Mariupol.
The former guitar teacher is on the sanctions list of the EU and the USA because of her involvement in the kidnappings. The statement by the US Treasury Department, quoted from CNN, says: "Lvova-Belova's efforts include, in particular, the forced adoption of Ukrainian children into Russian families, the so-called 'patriotic upbringing' of Ukrainian children, changes in the law to grant Russian citizenship Federation to Ukrainian children, and the deliberate kidnapping of Ukrainian children by Russian forces."
According to media reports, Russians who adopt Ukrainian children receive financial incentives. There is talk of a one-time payment of "maternity capital and state aid" in the amount of 20,000 rubles, the equivalent of about 300 US dollars. There are also higher payments for older children or children with disabilities and siblings. Adoption also gives the adopter the right to change the child's name. This makes later identification even more difficult. There were also reports on Russian television that the adoption documents were being destroyed using a simplified procedure. Here, too, the aim is for the children to forget everything Ukrainian and instead receive a pro-Russian patriotic upbringing.
In propaganda footage, Lvova-Belova can be seen attending the awarding of Russian citizenship to Ukrainian children. Among other things, she expresses her enthusiasm about this "fantastic development" that the children forget everything Ukrainian and increasingly identify as Russians. ZDF has just shown that the international aid organization SOS Children's Villages is also involved in the kidnapping. Pictures show that Ukrainian children were taken to the SOS Children's Village Tomilino near Moscow. Upon request, the organization confirmed that 13 children from Ukraine are being cared for in Tomilino. SOS Children's Villages Russia "cannot provide any information about how the children came to Russia and obtained Russian citizenship".
Ukraine not only sees the adoptions as a violation of national laws, but also of the Geneva Convention. This prohibits occupying powers from changing the marital status of children. Kyiv has been saying for months that it will continue to make every effort to ensure that Ukrainian children illegally admitted and adopted in Russia can return to their parents or legal guardians.
(This article was first published on Saturday, February 25, 2023.)
