The Illegal Abduction of Ukrainian Children

Special Report, August 2026

By Sophia Khan, Beth Paul, Alexander Smith, and Emily Mullin

Ukrainian children fleeing Russian aggression (Mirek Pruchnicki from Przemyśl, Sanok, Polska, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Parliamentary Assembly has publicly presented its 2026 report by the Special Envoy on Russian Abductions and Deportations of Ukrainian Children. The report stresses that the situation on the return of Ukrainian children remains dire, echoing urgent concerns raised by many Ukrainian human rights activists. It notes that thousands of children have been deported to Russia or transferred to Russian-occupied territories or Belarus. The Ukrainian government has confirmed over 20,000 child abductions by Russia since its 2022 invasion. Some Ukrainian NGOs and war crimes-monitoring coalitions estimate the total number could be in the hundreds of thousands. The Special Envoy’s report also emphasizes that Russia has not cooperated or shared information to help locate and identify these children, thus impairing reunification efforts. In addition, children living in the Russian-occupied territories are subject to systematic Russification, propaganda, and indoctrination through the education system and other state-sponsored structures.

The physical and ideological infrastructure for such large-scale forced population transfer has its roots in the 2014 annexation of Crimea, but it has been bolstered by the heavily militarized Russian invasion of Ukraine, ongoing since 2022. Beginning in the summer of 2014, Russian separatist forces abducted children in Luhansk. In at least one of these cases, a bus of orphaned children was forced at gunpoint to divert into Russian territory. Only when Ukraine took a plea to the European Court of Human Rights were the children on the bus returned. That same year, Ukraine recorded the first adoption of an orphaned child by Russian parents in Crimea, an act which was immediately repudiated by Ukraine as illegitimate under international law. In the same year, Russian “charity celebrity” Yelizaveta Glinka began transferring children from occupied Donetsk into Russia under the premise of humanitarianism. By 2022, she had facilitated the transfer of over 500 children and requested that Putin modify Russian law to legalize these acts.

Glinka’s actions drew from the irredentist Russkiy Mir (Russian World) ideology and laid the conceptual groundwork for Russia’s current Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, to claim that such deportations and transfers were humanitarian initiatives. At one point, she bragged about adopting a Ukrainian child named Pylyp from the city of Mariupol and about pressuring him to accept Russian culture. Both Putin and Lvova-Belova have been charged by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for violating the Rome Statute by deporting Ukrainian children and facilitating the transfer of the occupied Ukrainian population.

International humanitarian agreements forbid this type of transfer of children and entitle children to special protection during armed conflict. Article 24 of the Fourth Geneva Conventions requires that children under 15 who are orphaned or separated from their families must be transferred to a neutral country, if possible, and that care and assistance must be provided to them. Article 50 obliges an occupying power to facilitate the care and education of children and not hinder essential the provision of necessary services.

In addition, the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) urges states to “take all feasible measures” to protect and care for children affected by armed conflict. The CRC introduces the framework of the best interests of the child, with Article 39 imposing an obligation on states to take all appropriate measures for the recovery and reintegration of child victims of armed conflict. Child abduction is also one of the UN’s "six grave violations" against children during armed conflict.

Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, removals of Ukrainian children became systematic Russian state practice, and significant legislative reforms have allowed the program to be both expanded and simplified. Some children have been separated from their parents during military operations or “filtration,” while others were removed from institutions or sent to camps. Under coercion, some parents consent to the transfer of their children; others can be charged with fabricated crimes and deemed “unfit,” so that Russia can gain custody of the children. Once transferred to Russia, children can be placed in Russian foster families and adoption programs. Russian adoptive parents have the right to legally change the children’s names, patronymics, and date of and place of birth, thus erasing the child’s Ukrainian legal identity and making recovery nearly impossible. Upon being placed into foster care, under guardianship, or adoption, children undergo re-education and Russification. In some cases, children are beaten, abused, confined, and threatened to be sent to psychiatric hospitals for disobedience.

A UN commission concluded in March 2026 that Russia’s forced transfers amount to crimes against humanity. The OSCE agrees, identifying Russia’s child abductions as an act of Ukrainian erasure. Still, Russia shows no signs of slowing down, and it maintains a network of over 200 facilities for child re-education, military training, and other cultural programming. Researchers have documented that all of these facilities indoctrinate with pro-state and militarized propaganda and that more than 20% of them are being expanded. Children who were especially exposed to these harms include vulnerable children, such as orphans, children with disabilities, children from low-income families, and children whose parents served in the Ukrainian military. 

Re-education, or Russification, strips children of their Ukrainian identity and subjects them to symbolic and political socialization. Examples of psychological conditioning include barring the Ukrainian language, exposure to propaganda, and visits to “patriotic sites.” One tactic used in re-education camps is to lie to children that they have been saved from Ukraine, and that Russia is merely defending itself from the aggressor and promoting peace efforts. The narrative of Ukraine as the aggressor forces the perception that their home is the enemy and Russia their savior. History books are swapped for propaganda that reinforces this. As one family testifies, a Ukrainian girl rescued from Russia no longer trusts her friends or community since returning. Another recounts being sent to isolation for five days for refusal to fall in line with policy. Whether they are kept indefinitely and adopted into Russian families or returned home to Ukraine, Russia is creating a new generation of individuals who might be loyal to the Kremlin. Younger children’s first memories of Ukraine will include skewed and twisted stories of their home, family, and culture that are distorted to reflect Russian bias.

Article II(e) of the 1948 Genocide Convention identifies the “forcible transfer of children” from one protected group to another as a genocidal act when committed with the intent to destroy that group, in whole or in part. The provision recognizes that a group can be attacked not only by killing its present members, but also by severing its children from the language, culture, family relationships, and collective identity through which it survives.

The indoctrination of Ukrainian children, the erasure of their cultural identity, and reinforcement of Russian values is an effective tool of cultural genocide, destroying a group’s most basic method to survive. Children serve as vessels for the continuation of cultural practices, tradition, and lineage. The vitality of any ethnic group, culture, or religion depends on the continuation of values passed through generations. Historically, states and armed groups have targeted children because separating them from their families can weaken a community’s continuity, in part by making children assimilate into another national, religious, or cultural group.

In addition to abducting and indoctrinating Ukrainian children, Russia has begun to train children in military skills, both in the occupied territories of Ukraine and in Russia itself. This could constitute or lead to serious wartime violations of Article 50 of the Fourth Geneva Conventions, which requires occupying powers to protect the safety of children. In 2022, the Center for the Development of Military-Athletic Training and Patriotic Education of Youth was created to operate military training facilities for children in Russia and the occupied territories in Ukraine. In these “warrior” facilities, children as young as eight years old undergo intensive military training that prepares them to contribute to the Russian war machine. Children undergo physical conditioning and tactical training, such as drills in grenade throwing; they learn how to contribute to the manufacture of drones. While it is not confirmed that Ukrainian children are being sent to the frontline to fight on behalf of Russia, cultivating children’s loyalty to the Kremlin through military training could contribute to a potential pipeline from abduction to enlistment.

The Russian abduction and deportation system has also drawn broad financial support from Russia’s state-owned energy sector. In a report published in March of 2026, Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) concluded with “high confidence” that the two largest Russian oil and gas companies, Gazprom and Rosneft, as well as their subsidiaries and trade unions, have been financing the deportation system. The first documented corporate involvement predates the full-scale invasion to as early as 2015, when Gazprom took at least 15 Ukrainian children to Kubanskaya Niva, a camp owned by their subsidiary. While the report does not attribute this 2015 event to Rosneft, following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, both companies significantly expanded their involvement by providing camps and vouchers, financing or arranging transportation, and supporting programs of pro-Russian re-education. The HRL researchers found that, between 2022 and 2025, the companies facilitated the transportation and relocation of approximately 2,158 children from occupied areas of Donetsk, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia.

The HRL researchers identified six camps in Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea that were connected to Gazprom and Rosneft. Three camps were owned by Gazprom subsidiaries when Ukrainian children attended them from 2022 to 2025. In 2022-23, Gazprom-affiliated subsidiaries and trade unions issued at least 1,072 camp vouchers, while Rosneft’s Interregional Trade Union sponsored 100 Ukrainian children to attend three camps in 2023. The researchers underscore that their estimate is only a conservative inference, and the actual number of children is probably much higher.

These findings demonstrate that Russia’s campaign extended beyond government ministries. State-owned companies supplied the money, facilities, transportation, and institutional relationships that helped transform the removal and Russification of Ukrainian children into a methodical system. 44 Russian-affiliated entities are identified in the report for supporting these activities, but only six are sanctioned by the United States and Europe.

The illegal deportation of Ukrainian children is a part of Russia’s broader genocidal campaign of destruction and terror against the Ukrainian people and nation. The 2026 OESC report notes that children transferred to Russia are subject to a “double violation” of their rights: they are separated from their home, their families, and their sense of security, but they are also deprived of their rights to identity, language, culture, and heritage. Russia’s continued violation of the rights and security of one of the most vulnerable groups in society, children, is a grave affront to the principles of international law that must be further exposed, challenged, and, ultimately, prosecuted.

Recommendations

• The ICC should open investigations into Russia’s crime of genocide against Ukraine, recognizing the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children as an act of genocide within the context of Russia’s broader intent to destroy the Ukrainian national group.

• The international community must support and strengthen international justice efforts promoting accountability for the war in Ukraine, including at the International Criminal Court and the Special Tribunal on the Crime of Aggression.

• The Ukrainian government and allied countries should prioritize the integration and rehabilitation of those children who have been returned to Ukraine and support governmental and non-governmental repatriation initiatives, such as the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children, which coordinates joint efforts in information-sharing, capacity alignment, and advocacy in ensuring the return of Ukrainian children. This should include increasing funding for rehabilitative, psychological, and social supports for children and families affected by deportations.

• All countries participating in future peace negotiations should ensure the return of all Ukrainian children becomes a term of any negotiated settlement.