Ukrainian children taken to Russia become spoils of war
As Russian forces laid siege to the Ukrainian city of Mariupol last spring, children fled bombed-out group homes and boarding schools. Separated from their families, they followed neighbors or strangers heading west, seeking the relative safety of central Ukraine.
Instead, at checkpoints around the city, pro-Russia forces intercepted them, according to interviews with the children, witnesses, and family members. Authorities put them on buses headed deeper into Russian-held territory.
“I didn’t want to go,” said Anya, 14, who escaped a home for tuberculosis patients in Mariupol and is now with a foster family near Moscow. “But nobody asked me.”
In the rush to flee, she said, she left behind a sketchbook containing her mother’s phone number. All she could remember were the first three digits.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in late February, Russian authorities have announced with patriotic fanfare the transfer of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia to be adopted and become citizens. On state-run TV, officials offer teddy bears to new arrivals, who are portrayed as abandoned children being rescued from war.
This mass transfer of children is a potential war crime, regardless of whether they were orphans. And although many of the children did come from orphanages and group homes, authorities also took children whose relatives or guardians want them back, according to interviews with children and families on both sides of the border.
As Russian troops pushed into Ukraine, children like Anya who were fleeing newly occupied territories were swept up. Some were taken after their parents had been killed or imprisoned by Russian troops, according to local Ukrainian officials.
This systematic resettlement is part of a broader strategy by Russian President Vladimir Putin to treat Ukraine as a part of Russia and cast his illegal invasion as a noble cause. His government has used children — including the sick, poor, and orphaned — as part of a propaganda campaign presenting Russia as a charitable savior.
Through interviews with parents, officials, doctors, and children in Ukraine and Russia, The New York Times identified several children who had been taken away. Some returned home. Others, including Anya, remain in Russia.
Anya had lived apart from her mother and was in only sporadic contact with her before the war. Without the phone number, Anya said she could not reach her.
At first, reporters could not, either.
The Times is not identifying Anya’s full name. A shy girl with a passion for drawing, she said that her Russian foster family treated her well but that she ached to return to Ukraine. Soon, though, she said she would become a Russian citizen. “I don’t want to,” she said. “My friends and family aren’t here.”
Anya and others described a wrenching process of coercion, deception, and force as children were shipped to Russia from Ukraine. Together, their accounts add to a growing body of evidence from governments and news reports about a removal-and-adoption policy that targets the most vulnerable children in the most dangerous situations.
Transferring people out of an occupied territory can be a war crime, and experts say the practice is especially thorny when it involves children, who may not be able to consent. Ukrainian officials accuse Russia of perpetrating a genocide. The forced transfer of children, when intended to destroy a national group, is an act of genocide under international law.
Russian officials have made clear that their goal is to replace any childhood attachment to home with a love for Russia.
While the resettlement of children from newly occupied lands has so far been sporadic, the Russian government recently announced plans to resettle these children more efficiently, raising the prospect of many more transfers.
Russia’s wartime tactic exploits some of the thorniest and most intimate family dynamics. Russian families spoke of adoption as a matter of patriotism, but they also expressed a heartfelt desire to provide a better life for the children. And while many Ukrainian parents try to recover their children, others do not, whether for financial reasons
‘I don’t want to [become a Russian citizen]. My friends and family aren’t here.’
ANYA, 14, who is among the Ukrainian children transferred for adoption
or because their relationships were severed even before the war.
Anya was living and recovering from tuberculosis in a group home on a wooded campus with a red swing set. As explosions blew out the building’s windows and doors, the children fled to the basement. Anya read fairy tales to the youngest ones and passed the time by drawing.
Many parents rescued children from Anya’s building. Others did not, whether because they could not make their way through the war zone or, like Anya’s mother, were unreachable.
A Ukrainian volunteer crammed Anya and the 20 or so remaining children into an ambulance bound for the city of Zaporizhzhia, other children recalled. But they were rerouted at a Russian checkpoint, they said, and ended up with dozens of children at a hospital in the city of Donetsk, the capital of a region that Russia has occupied since 2014.
This region is the heart of Russia’s removal-and-adoption policy. Since the invasion began, Putin’s government has promoted the systematic transfer of children from the area’s orphanages and group homes.
For Anya and others taken from newly occupied territories in Ukraine, Donetsk also served as a sort of way station en route to Moscow.
Local authorities around Mariupol told similar stories of children who survived the Russian assault and ended up at nearby hospitals. One toddler arrived in a stroller along with a handwritten note that read, “This is Misha. Please help him!” said Vasyl Mitko, an official in the town of Nikolske who helped at the hospital.
But one by one, Mitko said, the children vanished. “They simply took away all the children who were left without parents,” he said. “We still do not know where these children are.”
After more than a month of reporting, Times reporters reached Anya’s mother, Oksana, in Ukraine. With no job, no Internet access, a small disability pension, and a war going on, she said she had no idea how to find her daughter.
“I’m looking everywhere, but I can’t find her,” she said. “She is looking for me.”
She said she did not know that Anya had been taken to Russia.
Reporters told Anya and Oksana how to contact each other. The prospect of Anya returning home, though, is unclear. Ukrainian officials have been tightlipped about how they have gotten dozens of children back from Russia.
“Is this really her number?” Anya asked.