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The UN General Assembly has demanded that Russia return Ukrainian children who have been separated from their families and taken to Russia since 2014, when Moscow seized Crimea.
In a newly adopted resolution—passed with 91 votes in favor, 12 against, and 57 abstentions—the UN called on Russia to “ensure the immediate, safe, and unconditional return of all Ukrainian children who have been forcibly transferred or deported.”
The resolution claims Moscow’s actions violate international law, which prohibits the “forcible transfer or deportation of protected persons from occupied territory.”
“It is unimaginable that someone could view children as war trophies,” said Ukraine’s deputy Foreign Minister, Mariana Betsa. She said at least 20,000 Ukrainian children have been deported to Russia. Russia rejected the resolution, with its ambassador, Maria Zabolotskaya, calling it a “particularly cynical lie.”
The Ukrainian government says several hundred thousand children have been forcibly taken to Russia, with more than 19,000 cases identified. Experts at Yale University estimate that 35,000 children have been taken from Ukraine to more than 100 locations in Russia and Russian-occupied territories.
So far, Ukraine has been able to return 1,859 children who were “abducted by Russia,” Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska said Monday during a high-level meeting in Paris.
A 2023 Yale report identified 43 sites that allegedly held thousands of Ukrainian children after Russia invaded in February 2022. The report said parents gave consent “under duress” to allow their children to attend recreational camps. Some facilities placed children into foster care or adoption in Russia, even though many had parents in Ukraine.
Ukraine plans to take a case involving abducted children to international courts as a war crime. In August, Ukrainian prosecutors identified three suspects in the abduction of 15 children from a school in a Russian-occupied region.
More than two years earlier, on March 15, 2023, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine concluded that Russian authorities had committed a wide range of violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in several regions of Ukraine and the Russian Federation. The report said these violations included war crimes such as “willful killings, attacks on civilians, unlawful confinement, torture, rape, and forced transfers and deportations of children.”
Two days later, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, his commissioner for children’s rights. The ICC charged them with direct responsibility for the large-scale unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children to Russian-controlled territory, which it said amounts to a war crime under international law.
Beyond Russia’s forced deportations, some children who remained in Ukraine without families and under government care faced a different set of horrors. An investigation by OCCRP and its Ukrainian member center Slidstvo documented the abuse and neglect of hundreds of orphans evacuated by a private charity to a Turkish seaside town, where they were subjected to physical violence and received inadequate medical care and education.
