Russia proudly claims to have ‘adopted’ Ukrainian children, despite facing accusations of war crimes.
Nearly 400 Ukrainian Children “Adopted” in Russia, Amidst Humanitarian Crisis
Nearly 400 Ukrainian children have undergone an “adoption” process in Russia, according to a lead Russian official indicted on international war crimes charges for the seizure of Ukrainian children.
“From April to October 2022, Russian foster families in 19 regions of the country adopted 380 orphaned children and children left without parents’ care,” Russian children’s rights ombudswoman Maria Lvova-Belova said in an annual report unveiled this week.
That’s a paltry figure in comparison to the “more than 700,000 children” that Russian officials claim to have taken from the occupied territories. And while Ukrainian officials and analysts suggest that the actual number of children in Russian custody is much smaller, the issue still has emerged as a humanitarian crisis near the heart of the war in Ukraine.
“So this is I think, one of the most painful issues for Ukraine, for Ukrainians,” Center for European Policy Analysis non-resident senior fellow Olga Tokariuk, an independent journalist, told the Washington Examiner in an interview from her country. “It has to do with the future generations of Ukrainians, those who are now being kidnapped and deported from Ukraine and re-educated as to make them hate Ukraine.”
United Nations Human Rights Commission Calls it a “War Crime”
A team of United Nations Human Rights Commission investigators has described Russia’s treatment of Ukrainian children as “a war crime,” after a probe that culminated in the rejection of Russian claims that the children are being rescued from the conflict zone as a humanitarian gesture.
“The transfers were not justified by safety or medical reasons,” the U.N. investigators stated in March. “There seems to be no indication that it was impossible to allow the children to relocate to territory under Ukrainian government control. It also does not appear that Russian authorities sought to establish contact with the children’s relatives or with Ukrainian authorities.”
That finding was followed quickly by the International Criminal Court’s issuance of an arrest warrant for both Russian President Vladimir Putin and his “children’s rights ombudsman,” Lvova-Belova.
“One of the worst incidents we have seen in this war is the deportation of Ukrainian civilians to Russia, including civilians who have been forcibly separated from their family,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Monday. “That was an important consideration in the secretary’s determination that Russian forces and officials have committed crimes against humanity … And I would say that we support accountability for these crimes.”
The Plight of Ukrainian Children in Russia
Lvova-Belova’s report was unveiled Sunday, one day before Ukrainian defense officials released their latest assessment of Russia’s mobilization of Ukrainian citizens in occupied territories.
“This is a violent mobilization: The occupiers caught people in the street, they came to the few enterprises that were still working and forcibly took people away ― they simply changed clothes and sent them to the front,” Ukrainian Defense Intelligence Agency representative Andrii Cherniak said Monday. “A person went to class in the morning and two days later he already fights. Strictly speaking, Russia does not consider the residents of Donetsk and Luhansk regions human, so the occupiers do not care, the laws do not apply.”
Such a mobilization raises a painful dilemma for Ukrainian forces fighting to liberate those occupied territories. “The only real possibility [to survive] is to surrender immediately, at the first opportunity,” Cherniak said.
Yet the Ukrainian children in Russia — at least 19,546 “deported and/or forcibly displaced person”, according to Ukrainian data, although “the exact number” can’t be proven — might in a sense be even more vulnerable, given their submersion in Russian education and media environments. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has made their recovery a high priority in diplomatic talks, but Russian authorities reportedly are “hiding that they are Ukrainian” when the children are registered into the national adoption system, as human rights activists told The Atlantic.
“It’s a part of a genocidal policy in general,” Tokariuk said. “So yeah, it is seen as a part of this wider Russian strategy to eradicate Ukrainian identity, to kind of crush the Ukrainian spirit and existence of Ukraine as an independent democratic nation. And that’s why you know, there is such a determination to fight on the behalf of Ukrainians.”
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