It’s no secret that the Russian government has kidnapped thousands of Ukrainian children and sent them to re-education camps scattered across Russia. However, according to a new report, this is just the beginning of Russia’s alleged crimes against the children of Ukraine.
The Conflict Observatory, a program supported by the U.S. State Department, analyzes and preserves publicly available information and makes it available for use in ongoing and future accountability mechanisms. Using this data, Yale University generated a report, presented to the United Nations Security Council, which discovered “three interconnected, Russia-affiliated child placement databases in which children from Ukraine were placed as if they were an orphan from Russia on Russia’s program, to systematically transfer, adopt and naturalize Ukrainian children.”
What’s more, “President [Vladimir] Putin’s personal Presidential Air Wing and Russia’s Aerospace forces transported the children from Ukraine into and within Russia in 2022.”
“Russian forces have stolen children and sent them to Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine’s sovereign territory or deported them into Russia itself, where all trace of them is often obscured,” said Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. Permanent representative to the United Nations.
“Russia’s forces have assigned these Ukrainian children new Russian names, Russian passports, and subjected them to Russian “military-patriotic” indoctrination programs. They have punished children for speaking Ukrainian, lied to them about the fates of their families and communities, and forced them into adoptions with Russian families,” she said.
“In other words, Russia has sought to systematically erase these children’s identities.”
“Make no mistake, Russian officials and Russian forces have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity,” said Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield. “Russia has remained intransigent and unrepentant, frustrating international efforts … to identify, locate, and reunify missing children with their families and legal guardians.
“For our part, the United States, together with partners around the world, has pursued measures to hold Russian officials to account,” she said. “In March of this year, we joined the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children.”
“We continue to support Ukraine’s national authorities, international efforts, and civil society in pushing for the safe return of Ukrainian children and for accountability.”
“Children never start wars, but they are always victims of war,” said Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield. “If the Kremlin achieves its war aims and changes Ukraine’s borders by force or ends Ukraine’s existence as a sovereign and independent country, Russia will continue its siege elsewhere and more people, more children, will suffer. We must not allow that to happen.”
