Thread by @ri_not_ri

Stealing Ukrainian children is a part of the Russian genocidal strategy.

In this long read, I describe in detail how Russians kidnap Ukrainian children and which goal they pursue.

I would be grateful for your sharing this thread and expressing your opinions in replies 🔽

The consequences of war for a child are significant. After losing adult relatives during rocket attacks and bombings, children become orphans. Air bombs and artillery shelling are destroying their homes. Also, children have health problems, must live with mutilations, and overcome the mental trauma of war and stress.

Russians are also committing another war crime — the deportation of children to the territory of the Russian Federation or the temporarily occupied Crimea, followed by forced placement into Russian families.

During the first year of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, at least six thousand Ukrainian children were abducted into the territory of Russia and the annexed Crimea.

The Russian authorities call it a ‘rescue,’ but in reality, Russian occupiers simply kidnap children as war trophies, taking them out of their settlements and seeking to erase their identity.

On April 10, 2022, the Children of War portal published data on 19,384 deported minors. The figure announced by Russians is much higher: 750 thousand children. According to the head of the Save Ukraine Foundation, Mykola Kuleba, more than 1.5 million Ukrainian children in total remain in the territory of the Russian Federation or the occupied Ukrainian territories. As of March 13, 2023, 366 children are officially considered missing, and 16,226 were deported to the RF.

It is impossible to provide the exact number of affected children due to active hostilities and the temporary occupation of some parts of the Ukrainian territory.

As of September 2023, Ukraine managed to bring back only 386 children. There are at least 19,000 more identified Ukrainian children forcibly held in the Russian Federation.

Russians abduct Ukrainian children under various pretexts—rehabilitation, evacuation, medical treatment, liberation from ‘Nazism’—and are reluctant to return them. There is an impression that Russians do it by the book on genocide: they send children from one ethnic group to another, re-educate them, impose alien values, do everything to eradicate the national identity of children, and erase everything related to Ukraine from their memory.

According to Alyona Lunyova, Director of Advocacy at the ZMINA Human Rights Center, deported children can be divided into several groups:

The first category includes children who find themselves on Russian territory with their parents or adults accompanying them.

The second category is children who became orphans during the armed conflict because their parents were killed by Russia.

The third category is children previously kept in Ukrainian boarding schools and institutions with the sanatorium-type of education. It also includes orphans who had lived in orphanages. Orphans are a particularly defenseless category. The Kremlin does not respond to the demands of the Ukrainian side to return home almost 4,500 orphans.

The fourth category is children sent to recreation camps or for medical treatment in the territory of the Russian Federation together with their parents.

“The offer sounded tempting: the principal of Vitaliy’s school in Beryslav in the Kherson region invited the pupils to the seaside in Crimea. It was the end of September, and the occupation authorities had not started the school year yet. The decision had to be made immediately, and the parents were pressured to sign the permit,” tells Inna, Vitaliy's mother, who gave in to her son’s desire to go there, though she had doubts: “It’s already October, what kind of camp can it be? Are the kids going to be running around in boots in a couple of weeks?”

There were children from Beryslav and other nearby villages. To Inna’s surprise, parents sent very young—five-year-old—children on vacation. In the Mechta (Dream) sanatorium in Yevpatoria, the children had rest for two weeks as promised, bathing in the sea, and going to an amusement park and a zoo. Vitaliy says that the sanatorium administration only asked them to avoid political topics not to ‘cause conflicts.’ But in two weeks, everything changed.

“We were told: ‘This camp is closing, pack your things, tomorrow you will be transferred to another one.’ In the morning, we took the bus, though there was only a block to go. When we came closer, I saw wooden windows with a grid. I asked, ‘Is it a prison?’ I went into the room and found not a single socket, no table, no pillowcases,” recounts Vitaliy, a 16-year-old boy who was illegally abducted by Russians from Beryslav, Kherson region, to a ‘re-education camp’ in Crimea.

In that camp, ideological indoctrination began: children had to sing the anthem of the Russian Federation, and for any manifestation of Ukrainianness, they were punished by being thrown into a cellar. At least an hour a day was devoted to ‘talking about important things.’ These sessions were conducted by Valery Astakhov. According to The Insider, Astakhov is a former Berkut (riot police) officer whose role was to intimidate Ukrainian children in such camps. It was he who used to say: ‘I don’t want to hear you come from Ukraine. You must say that you were born in the RF. Ukrainians are terrorists, they kill people. You have been expelled from Ukraine.’

On February 14, 2023, the Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) of the Yale School of Public Health presented a study on the subject of “Russia’s systematic program for the re-education and adoption of Ukraine’s children” in which analysts prove that Russia has set up 43 camps for ideological re-education of children followed by their placement into Russian families. According to Yale researchers, at least 6,000 children ended up in them.

Deported little Ukrainians are taken to the most remote and depressed regions of Russia—Siberia, the Far East, the North Caucasus, Chechnya, and Sakhalin. They are deprived of identity papers, personal belongings, and means of communication. Instead, they are given an official document prohibiting them from leaving Russian territory for two years.

According to the pieces of correspondence of the RF Ministry of Education with regional guardianship authorities intercepted by journalists, in August 2022, more than 400 orphans abducted from the occupied territories of Ukraine were distributed to 24 Russian orphanages and boarding schools. These include:
🔹Rybnovsk boarding school on Sakhalin;
🔹Zurinska boarding school in the Izhevsk region (Udmurtia);
🔹Ivolga boarding school in Samara.
21 out of these institutions have programs of the so-called military-patriotic education in place.

During the summer of 2024, Russians brought 40 thousand Ukrainian children to re-education camps.

To date, the Zmina Center’s analysts have found 13 re-education camps in the occupied territory of Ukraine, another 18 in Belarus, and 67 in Russia. Also, according to their information, in 2024, spending from the federal budget of the Russian Federation on children’s ‘recreation’ increased by 11.6% compared to last year, reaching 76.8 billion rubles.

Children are fed there and have some kind of classes. Of course, the teaching is conducted in the Russian language. Every day, a discussion of the latest political news takes place, during which educators talk about the ‘real enemies’ of Ukraine: Europe and the United States. They poison the minds of Ukrainian children against their homeland and partner countries, explaining to them what the so-called special military operation is ‘indeed’ all about. Together they watch briefings by the Russian Ministry of Defense about ‘eliminating the Nazis,’ learn how to shoot a Kalashnikov rifle, and write letters to Russian soldiers fighting at the frontline.

“I was personally shocked by the fact that teenagers were sent to a camp in Chechnya, where they just undergo military training. These boys are labeled as those showing ‘difficult behavior,’ thus subject to re-instruction in the Akhmat battalion to become ‘true patriots’ of the RF. This is a militarized system, where education is conducted not only within the curriculum but also using completely anti-pedagogical methods aimed at sowing hatred for children’s home country. In this way, the teens are encouraged to join the ranks of the armed forces of the Russian Federation when they grow up,” Ms. Lunyova shares her concern.

According to the New Voice of Ukraine independent news resource, the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation is the agency in charge of abducted Ukrainian children.

The documents studied by journalists of Meduza, an international publication released in Russian and English, reveal that Russian teachers face the task of ‘reorienting and establishing the Russian identity of the younger generation of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions.’

At the same time, the war, the only reason why Ukrainian children ended up in Russia, is described in methodological guidelines by the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation as follows: “a complication of the geopolitical situation that... pushes families... to forced displacement.”

Those interviewed by the New Voice said that the Ministry of Education of the RF is afraid of children deported from Ukraine. Among themselves, they call these children ‘potential terrorists’ who ‘may begin to oppose’ the Russian authorities.

The Center for the Study and Network Monitoring of the Youth Environment is an IT company founded on behalf of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to monitor the activities of Ukrainian children on the Internet.

A journalists’ investigation discovered that this Center makes it possible to de-anonymize any teenager’s page and analyze it down to comments and likes. As a result of this analysis, each child gets assigned a ‘coefficient of destructiveness’ and a ‘coefficient of opposition.’

Russian commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, insists that Russians cannot adopt a child from ‘new regions.’ However, according to Meduza, these claims do not correspond to reality. They found documentary evidence of a program for the mass adoption of Ukrainian children.

“Our Russian citizens have a big heart and have already lined up to take these children,” declared the same official at a working meeting with Putin.

It is unlikely that Russian ‘parents’ are willing to adopt these children. Dozhd, an independent Russian-language TV channel, has recently contacted such adopters and got the impression that these Russian families did not want but yielded to pressure to take Ukrainian children. On the one hand, propagandists boast about how quickly Ukrainian children get distributed to foster families, and on the other hand, Russia does not have enough capacity to place Ukrainian children in boarding schools because these institutions are already overcrowded.

It was recently reported that Sergei Mironov, a State Duma deputy and leader of the pro-Kremlin “A Just Russia” party, together with his wife Inna Varlamova, adopted a girl abducted from Ukraine, two-year-old Margarita Prokopenko. Her name was changed to Marina Mironova. Mironova’s press secretary denied this fact and named it a ‘smear campaign by the Ukrainian intelligence service.’ But the same is known of the commissioner for children’s rights of the Russian Federation, Maria Lvova-Belova.

Overall, it may well be assumed that Russian top officials kind of compete with each other in taking abducted Ukrainian children into their families to make ‘proper Russians’ out of them but prefer to keep a low profile. They try to turn kidnapped children into imperialists by sending them to various military schools for training and forging their identity papers.

The ‘defendant’ of children’s rights complains to the whole world about how difficult it is to re-educate Ukrainian children, these little Nazis: “The adopted Ukrainian boy runs after the younger children shouting ‘I’m gonna eat you up, naughty Moscovites!’. But I know that this is because of anti-Russian propaganda in Mariupol.”

On March 17, 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague issued arrest warrants for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and Russian commissioner for children’s rights Maria Lvova-Belova. They are accused of illegally deporting children from Ukraine to the Russian Federation since February 24, 2022.

“This is a specific act—moving children from one group to another. This model was used to commit many genocides around the world. Moreover, a clear intention was shown by the presidential commissioner for children’s rights in the Russian Federation, who stated that these children are returning to their origin, getting Russian identity by receiving Russian passports. They are regarded as the future of this country and those who will be shaping it in the years to come. Minors are vulnerable, so it is easy to brainwash them,” opinionated Irene Massimino, head of the Lemkin Institute.

Last October, the Ukrainian Regional Center for Human Rights, together with the Lemkin Institute for the Genocide Prevention (LIPG), qualified the transfer of Ukrainian children as genocide, not a war crime, as described in the ruling by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“When coming across the abduction of children, we qualify it as part of the crime of genocide. So, if there is a genocidal intent, we can talk about the responsibility of the top political leadership of the Russian Federation and personally the representative of the President of the RF for children’s affairs Maria Lvova-Belova and the entire structure under her.”

At the very least, the status of two high-ranking officials—the President of Russia and the presidential commissioner for children’s rights—is affected by the ICC decision. They are suspects, and as such, they are restricted from leaving and disposing of accounts outside the Russian Federation. This may slow down their ‘activities’ towards the deportation of Ukrainian children.

Of course, Maria Lvova-Belova will not stop her vigorous activity but will make it less open. Kateryna Rashevska, a researcher at the Ukrainian Regional Center for Human Rights, said that Lvova-Belova has already begun retrospective editing of her social media pages and public statements about Ukrainian children.

Back in May last year, Russia simplified the procedure for acquiring citizenship for Ukrainian children who do not have guardians. Then, in December, Putin approved the procedure for renouncing Ukrainian citizenship and ‘ruled’ that children under the age of 14 in the newly occupied territories are, from now on, Russian citizens. This forced change of citizenship is evidence of another crime that has not yet been identified by the ICC, human rights activists believe.

It should be noted that Russia’s deportation of Ukrainian children did not begin with the start of the full-scale military aggression against Ukraine. Minors were abducted from the occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions well before that.

Michelle Mouton, Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, carries out research on women and children during World War II and the postwar period. According to her, at one time, the Nazi regime made the abduction of children from the occupied territories of Eastern Europe part of the policy. The Germans placed them in ‘trusted families.’ However, Germany, unlike today’s Russia, did not advertise such actions, and some of the new parents did not realize that they were becoming accomplices in the crime. “They were told that the baby’s parents were killed, for example, during a bombing,” Mouton says.

Kateryna Rashevska at the Ukrainian RCHR considers the narrative of the Russian government to be similar: Ukrainian children were brought to the Russian Federation under the banner of salvation. “However, this is not about humanity—it is a policy of mass theft of biological resources. Maniacal attempts to improve the demographic situation, to get more Russians,” says the expert.

Mykola Kuleba, former children’s ombudsman and head of Save Ukraine, noted that since 2014, more than 1 million Ukrainian children have been under Russian rule.

“As of January 3, 2024, we have managed to bring back home 517 children illegally displaced or deported by Russia. When I refer to ‘we’, I mean not only the Ukrainian government, but also the entire large team that includes representatives of NGOs, communities of citizens, and volunteers—and not just from Ukraine, but also from all over the world. There are cases where volunteers from Estonia and Belgium were involved. Many of them continue to help us,” said Dmytro Lubinets, commissioner for human rights of the Ukrainian Parliament, in his speech during the first meeting of the Special Committee on the Situation of Children in Ukraine established under the PACE.

What can international organizations do to help?
🔹Raise awareness and look for mechanisms for returning Ukrainian children.
🔹Demand that the Russian Federation compile lists of deported children because they are obliged to do so.
🔹Find a third country that can become an intermediary in communication with the Russian Federation for the Ukrainian party to make requests on the return of children on those lists.

“Children often cannot get in touch with their parents without someone’s help because they are too young. Many interviewees told us that the adults who had accompanied them to a camp asked the parents not to let them carry mobile phones. As a result, children could not let their parents know where they were. And at some point, these ‘chaperones’ just disappeared,” says a ZMINA Human Rights Center representative. “Russia tells parents that they will not be able to take back their children, and children—that their parents will not come for them because they do not love them and have abandoned them.”

There are cases where older children possessing smartphones with an Internet connection were looking for ways to leave the Russian Federation on their own initiative. For example, a child contacts an organization that helps him or her leave and informs respective agencies in Ukraine. Then, a birth certificate is issued here, enabling volunteers to pick up the child from Russian territory. Any information received by the Ministry of Reintegration or the Ombudsman in such a complicated way always meets a response.

Representatives of the Save Ukraine Foundation and SOS Children’s Villages Ukraine characterize the returned children as traumatized and withdrawn because they have been subjected to both psychological and physical mistreatment by occupiers.

Children who returned home from Russia said that they had faced bullying, insults, and humiliation because they came from Ukraine. “They told us: ‘We, Russians, are a nation. And you, Ukrainians, are nobody.’”

“There was no normal food and water to take a shower. We ran away to buy something to eat. They beat me with a metal stick and threatened to send me to a boarding school,” recalls a returned child.

“We know of a case where a child placed in a Russian family was punished by the deprivation of food for violating certain norms of that family. The system of protection of children’s rights in the territory of the Russian Federation not only does not work; it does not exist. If a child is badly treated there, it is unclear where to complain and get some kind of protection,” the representatives express their concern.

“Just imagine: an FSB (Federal Security Service) officer strips a mother and her child naked, films them on camera, and says that if they say something bad about Russia and it comes out, he will share the video on social media, mentioning the settlement where the family lived in the occupied territory. I can tell you a lot about the crimes committed by the occupiers there. And these children always break into tears at remembering the border sign of Ukraine, Ukrainian flag, and Ukrainian land,” Mr. Kuleba says.

But the real reason for deporting Ukrainians by Russians is propaganda. They distribute kidnapped children across the territory of the Russian Federation, from Krasnodar to Khabarovsk, so that all Russian regions get involved and can show live Ukrainians ‘fleeing from the Kyiv regime, rescuing themselves.’

Investigators emphasize that the deportation separated siblings, turned teenagers against each other, and preschool children having no relatives to adopt them disappeared into the Russia-controlled territory. Volunteers and officials in Ukraine state that returning Ukrainian children is getting tougher every day because they are growing up and experiencing an increasing influence by the aggressor country’s ideology.

Mr. Kuleba said that almost all abducted children were brainwashed under the motto “Divide et impera,” i.e., “Divide and rule,” the strategy applied domestically to secure Vladimir Putin’s power in Russia and used abroad in Russian disinformation campaigns to achieve regime security, predominance in Russia’s near abroad, and world-power status for Russia.

By deporting Ukrainian children, Russia is trying to steal the future of Ukraine. But the main goal is to secure Russia’s own future by turning free Ukrainians into its weak-willed citizens, janissaries of the XXI century even ready to kill on Russian orders.