By Galina Korol | 2024-06-27

KYIV -- Evidence is continuing to emerge of Moscow's abduction of children from Ukraine in what observers have described as intentional genocide.

Kyiv has accused Moscow of abducting almost 20,000 children from parts of eastern and southern Ukraine, while many more are living under Russian occupation after Moscow's troops invaded in February 2022.

The Financial Times (FT) in a report in June identified four Ukrainian children ages eight to 15 on Usynovite.ru, a Russian adoption website.

The website had altered two of the four children's names and did not cite "the Ukrainian background of any of the children," the FT reported.

The four children are listed in a Ukrainian database as missing.

Russian forces "abducted [them] from state care homes and separated [them] from their guardians and relatives" in 2022, the FT added.

The FT used "image recognition tools and public records, as well as interviews with Ukrainian officials and the children's relatives" to find the four children on Usynovite.ru.

They are now in Tula province, Orenburg province and illegally occupied Crimea.

"Ukrainian officials shared with the FT Russian government documents that show the Kremlin had devised plans ahead of its invasion to forcibly deport Ukrainian children," according to the report.

"This is an absolutely intentional and planned genocide policy that [Russia] started implementing in 2014," Aksana Filipishyna of Kyiv, a lawyer and deputy director of the analytical department of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, told Kontur.

This is not the first investigation to uncover crimes by Russia against Ukrainian children, she said.

In 2015, Pavel Astakhov, Russian President Vladimir Putin's then-children's rights commissioner, organized trains from Russian backwaters to Crimea to transport Ukrainian orphans and children with no parental guardianship, Filipishyna said.

The specter of mass abduction of Ukrainian children for illegal adoption has only become grimmer since 2022.

A February 2023 report by Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) identified "at least 43 facilities" in Russia or occupied Crimea holding forcibly removed Ukrainian children, including 11 that are situated more than 800km from Ukraine's border with Russia.

"In the five [Russian] provinces with the biggest concentration of Ukrainian children last year, we saw a spike in the number of children put up for adoption," said Filipishyna. "Even Russian rights activists sounded the alarm and predicted that this was caused by an influx of Ukrainian children."

'Giving away' children

Russian officials have enacted policies to encourage the adoption and brainwashing of Ukrainian children, with legal processes backing up Moscow's genocidal efforts, say observers.

In January, the Kremlin simplified the procedure for Ukrainian children to gain Russian citizenship.

"A Ukrainian child's citizenship may be changed solely on the basis of a statement by the director of the [relevant orphanage] or the chief doctor of the hospital where the child is unaccompanied by their relatives and legal guardians," Filipishyna said.

No one can say exactly how many Ukrainian children Russia is "giving away" under guardianship and adoption programs, said Andriy Chernousov of Kharkiv, a board member of the NGO Voices of Children.

"No one will give you those numbers, and the most important reason is that they [the Russians] are not presenting children who are up for adoption as Ukrainian," Chernousov told Kontur.

Russia speeds up the adoption process to keep Ukrainian children's profiles from lingering on the Usynovite.ru website.

"Many of them have already been adopted, and many of them are now in the adoption stage, because Russia is stimulating the process at home with things like 'maternity benefits' and a leg up in applying to universities in Moscow and St. Petersburg," Chernousov said.

"In other words, there's a whole 'bonus package' with substantial payments for parents and for child support," he said.

Erasing identity

The adoption process in Russia also allows officials to delete and rewrite a young Ukrainian's background information, which means children lose their documented connection with Ukraine and their origins.

"Russia has adoption privacy, which means that this information is confidential," Filipishyna said.

The only way to gain that information is if the "guardianship agency that [approved] ... this adoption retains and provides the original documents" on the child's destination and new name, she added.

"Otherwise, unfortunately, we won't be able to identify these children," Filipishyna said.

"In this case Russia is deliberately violating international humanitarian law," she added.

Russian authorities are meanwhile working full tilt to brainwash young Ukrainians, according to Mykola Kuleba, former Ukrainian presidential ombudsman for children.

"Putin's regime is influencing the brainwashing of Ukrainian children. ... It understands that if, God forbid, a child remains Ukrainian, grows up as Ukrainian and holds on to that identity, that will be a problem for Russia," Kuleba told Kontur.

The ideal picture is of the "obedient servant to the homeland."

In occupied Ukraine, "these kids are told that they need to grow up to be strong and fight for Russia and love Russia," Kuleba said.

An uphill battle

"With every passing day, the fight for the Ukrainian children gets harder because the enemy isn't sleeping and is only building up obstacles and complicating and worsening the situation," Filipishyna said.

Despite these challenges, Ukraine is doing everything it can to bring back children whom the Kremlin has illegally relocated to Russia during the war.

Ukrainian military intelligence operates a website called "War and Sanctions: Child Kidnappers."

It contains information on 245 Russian and Belarusian citizens involved in the illegal deportation of children from Ukraine during Russia's full-scale invasion.

"Illegal deportation and violent 're-education' by russia of children from the occupied territories of Ukraine is a crime against humanity and an act of cultural genocide," the website contends, deliberately lowercasing "russia."

The international community and the European Union (EU) have recognized the issue.

The International Criminal Court in March 2023 issued an arrest warrant for Putin and his children's rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, for the war crime of unlawful deportation and transfer of children.

"Now is the time to act & to bring back all the thousands of forcibly transferred & deported Ukrainian children," Josep Borrell, the EU's top diplomat, tweeted June 17.

"Weaponizing children must stop immediately. Russia must be held accountable for this heinous and inhumane crime," he said.