Charge Russians Who Adopt Ukrainian Children With Kidnapping

One of the most tragic aspects of Russia’s Ukraine War has been the seizure and kidnapping of Ukrainian children and their forced transfer into Russia. While Vladimir Putin’s regime may publicly couch the adoptions of supposed war orphans as humanitarian, the reality is that Russia seeks Ukrainian children as war booty and a means to offset Russia’s own demographic crisis.

Simply put, Russia’s fertility rate has plummeted. It is now 1.5 children per women, whereas the replacement rate to keep a population steady is 2.1 children. While Russia does not publish fertility statistics by ethnicity and religion, anecdotal evidence suggests that Russia’s Muslims have a higher fertility rate than their Russian Orthodox compatriots. To rebrand Ukrainian children as Russian Putin likely believes will help mitigate a problem that, ironically, will soon get even worse given the slaughter which Russian conscripts have endured.

While the Russians claim that the children they take are orphans and providing them new families is charitable, the reality is that many are not. Russian forces kidnapped them away from families who want them back. Simply put, they are not subjects of humanitarianism but rather human trafficking. The Russians who adopt them are equally complicit.

The international community must face this reality and plan to rectify it. While many Ukrainian children might disappear permanently into the system, some Russians who adopt children will, in the future, hope to resume vacations or shopping trips to Turkey, Europe, or the Middle East.

Not only the State Department and Europe, but every other country which wishes to stand firm against human trafficking should now require all Russian family members seeking visas to submit to DNA tests. The results need not be public, but those children whom tests prove are not genetically related to their “parents” but who might have Ukrainian origins should be flagged so that, when they step outside of Russian territory, they can be separated until an investigation can determine the manner in which they came to accompany their supposed Russian parents. If the evidence points to forcible adoption, they should be returned to Ukraine for a reunion with their parents, nearest relatives, or a Ukrainian orphanage. The Russian parents, meanwhile, should be charged with human trafficking.

Russia has become a pariah state. While some childless Russian parents may be desperate, this can be no excuse for their participation in a state-sanctioned human trafficking scheme. Long after the guns fall silent in Ukraine, Kyiv and the international community will have to repair the damage.

On October 12, 2022, the world overwhelmingly condemned Russia’s forced annexation of Ukrainian territory. Virtue signaling, however, is not enough. It is time every state that recognizes the illegality of Russia’s transfer or rebranding of populations acts to reverse the tragedy

Now a 1945 Contributing Editor, Dr. Michael Rubin is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Dr. Rubin is the author, coauthor, and coeditor of several books exploring diplomacy, Iranian history, Arab culture, Kurdish studies, and Shi’ite politics, including “Seven