How Moscow grabs Ukrainian kids and makes them Russians
Olga Lopatkina paced around her basement like a trapped animal. She hadn’t heard from her six adopted children stranded in Mariupol for over a week, and she didn’t know what to do.
The family would end up getting caught up in one of the most explosive issues of the war: Russia’s open effort to take Ukrainian orphans and bring them up as Russian.
An Associated Press investigation shows that Russia’s strategy is well underway. Thousands of children have been taken from basements of bombed out cities like Mariupol and from orphanages in the Russianbacked separatist territories of Donbas. They include those whose parents were killed by Russian shelling, others in institutions or with foster families.
Russia claims many of these children have no parents or guardians, or that they can’t be reached. But the AP found that officials have deported Ukrainian children to Russia or Russian-held territories without consent, lied to them that they weren’t wanted by their parents, and given them Russian families and citizenship.
The investigation is the most extensive to date on the grab of Ukrainian orphans, and the first to follow
the process all the way to those already growing up in Russia. It drew on dozens
of interviews with parents, children and officials in Ukraine and Russia; emails and letters; Russian documents and Russian state media.
Raising the children of war in another country or culture can be a marker of genocide, an attempt to erase a people’s very identity. Prosecutors tie the policy directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“It’s not something that happens spur of the moment on the battlefield,” said Stephen Rapp, a former U.S. Ambassador-atLarge for War Crimes Issues who is advising Ukraine on prosecutions.
Russian law prohibits the adoption of foreign children. But in May, Putin signed a decree expediting granting Russian citizenship to Ukrainian children without parental care.
Russia has prepared a register of suitable Russian families for Ukrainian children and offers substantial financial support. It portrays the adoptions as an act of generosity. Russian state television airs ceremonies of officials handing out passports to Ukrainian children.
How many is hard to say. Ukrainian officials claim nearly 8,000 children have been deported to Russia.
Russia hasn’t given an overall number. In March, Russian children’s rights ombudswoman Maria Lvova-Belova said 1,000 children from Ukraine were in Russia. Many more have come since, including over 230 in early October.