We are currently witnessing the deliberate and systematic deportation of Ukrainian children from territories occupied by Russia. 

The organisation ‘Bring Back Kids’ reports of nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children being deported from Ukraine and placed in one of more that 200 state run facilities across Russia.  The Guardian, has estimated that is could be as many as 35,000 Ukrainian Children.

Although this issue gained international attention following the commencement of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2022, evidence shows that “the displacement of Ukrainian Children has been ongoing since Russia’s first invasion in 2014”. The Humanitarian Research Lab reports that children are being “re-educated” in line with Russian ideologies and in some cases under-go military training, including the development of Russian military equipment.  Many have also been illegally adopted or granted Russian citizenship. 

The process appears to be “designed to systematically undermine and erase their Ukrainian identity through ‘re-education’ programmes”.  Such acts constitute grave violations of international humanitarian law, taking away these children’s fundamental rights “to family, to identity and to education”. According to the Italian Embassy in Kyiv, relatives are given no choice but to “undertake dangerous and threatening journeys” to Russian controlled territory, during which they “risk arrest and interrogation by Russian authorities” with no guarantee of finding their children. One Ukrainian mother describes “how she travelled alone for 6 days across the border, amid shelling and questioning by Russian guards” before she was finally reunited with her children. 

At the time of writing this report, ‘Bring Back Kids’ confirms 1,744 children have been returned and reunited with relatives. Under the Biden administration, the United States funded the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, which was able to “unearth data and actively track the location of thousands of Ukranian children” in the hope of finding and returning them to their families. Their findings hold strong “evidence of war crimes”, and “the lab shared its data with the International Criminal Court” (ICC), who issued arrest warrants against President Putin and Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights.
However, under the Trump administration, “budget cuts stopped the lab’s work… and the team have since lost access to their entire data base of research” which Human Rights Watch warns has “compromised evidence of war crimes and jeopardised efforts to find thousands of Ukrainian Children”.

In March 2023, ICC issued arrest warrants against President Putin and Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvona-Beloval, for the “the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation (under articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute”. However, “Moscow has denied allegations”.

In January 2024, Russia signed a decree allowing “orphans and children left without parental care who are Ukrainian citizens, to obtain Russian Citizenship”. The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned this decree as a direct violation of 
international humanitarian law, declaring it “null and void” with “the real value lying only in that it will serve as another proof of the war crimes of the Russian Federation against Ukraine”.