Investigative journalists have found the names and photos of four children abducted back in 2022 from the Kherson Regional Children’s Home on a Russian state adoption database [усыновите рф]. The children are clearly being offered for adoption, with no mention made of the fact that they are from Ukraine and were taken to Russia by force. The results of this new investigation come a month after the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine found that Russia’s deportation and forcible transfer of Ukrainian children to the Russian Federation were on a major scale and systematic, and “amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes”.
The new study was carried out by RFE/RL’s Current Time, together with the Reckoning Project. The journalists tracked down the information and application forms concerning four children who were abducted from the Kherson Regional Children’s Home in 2022, while Kherson was under Russian occupation. The application forms were current in March 2026.
Two children from the home were abducted in September 2022, with a further 46 on 21 October 2022. Only ten children have thus far been returned to Ukraine, with nine of these children having already been foisted Russian citizenship. Of the others, most have already been placed with families, leaving only the four found on the Russian government website. In November 2023, Important Stories reported that Sergey Mironov, the 70-year-old leader of one of the (nominal) parties in Russia’s Duma and his new wife had adopted a ten-year-old girl from the children’s home. They had changed her surname and her nationality. Since Mironov supports Russia’s war of aggression and Russian schools are increasingly engaged more in indoctrination and militarization, than in learning, the young Ukrainian will have doubtless been subjected to systematic brainwashing. Russia began this on all territory that came under its occupation in 2014, and has channelled vast amounts of money into propaganda, militaristic activities and so-called ‘history’ textbooks which tell children in Russia and occupied Ukraine that Russia never invaded Crimea, that the war was caused by Ukraine and its western allies, etc. Ukrainian children are told day in, day out, that they are ‘Russian’ and that they should want to ‘defend Russia’ against the enemy. If, on occupied territory, the children still have a chance of finding out that they are being lied to and of retaining their Ukrainian identity, small children taken by force from Ukraine and growing up as ‘Russians’ have no way of learning the truth.
It is important to stress that by no means all of the children were orphans. In one case, a child awaiting a very serious operation was in the home because of the intensive care he required. In another, a woman going through a difficult time had left her two very small children at the home, but this was never intended as a permanent arrangement.
According to the government’s Children of War website, 20,570 children have been forcibly deported to Russia since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Only 2,083 have been returned to Ukraine.
Vitya
Vitya was not even two when abducted by the Russians and taken to a children’s home in occupied Crimea. He had been in the Kherson Regional Children’s Home, under medical supervision while doctors prepared for an operation to rectify a congenital developmental problem.
The Russians did not admit any of this, and it took Vitya’s mother, Olha, even with the help of Ukrainian officials and volunteers, massive effort to learn that her son was being held in occupied Simferopol.
When she got in touch and demanded that they return her son, the Russians told her to come to Simferopol and get him. This was neither easy, nor particularly safe, however she set off, together with her sister, in October 2023. There has been no direct crossing since Russia began its full-scale invasion, and the two had to travel across several countries. They were interrogated on the border between Latvia and Russia, with questions particularly aimed at finding out about the women’s male relatives.
They did get through, and Vitya was, after over a year, reunited with his mother. One especially foul aspect to the story was the behaviour of Maria Lvova-Belova, Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s so-called representative on children’s rights. Both Putin and Lvova-Belova have been under International Criminal Court arrest warrants since 17 March 2023 over their role in the forced deportation of Ukrainian children. That move by the ICC led to a change in the narrative, with the official line being that children were not abducted for good, but ‘temporarily taken to safety’. This was, doubtless, why Lvova-Belova was present, all smiles, together with Olha and Vitya, in a photo at the Qatar Embassy. In fact, she had clearly been furious, demanding to know why Olha had come and who had told her that her son was in Simferopol.
War crimes and crimes against humanity
Although extremely difficult to get the children back, Russia’s crimes against them have been recognized and well-documented since before the International Criminal Court issued its arrest warrants against Putin, Lvova-Belova and three other Russians. This goes also for the forced transfer of the children from the Kherson Regional Children’s Home and includes Tetiana Zavalska, paediatrician – collaborator. She was illegally installed as ‘director’ of the children’s home after its legitimately appointed Director refused to collaborate with the invaders, and was used to give a feeble, and legally meaningless, semblance of legitimacy to Russia’s crimes.
In its fourth report since it was created by the UN Human Rights Council soon after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine condemned Russia’s deportation of Ukrainian children and spoke of how such actions have “irreversible consequences on their lives and their future."
“Compelling evidence concerning the deportation and transfer of a total of 1205 children from five oblasts in Ukraine, verified by the Commission, has led it to conclude that these acts amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes of deportation and forcible transfer of children. The Russian authorities have systematically failed to disclose the whereabouts of the children to parents or legal guardians and have kept them in a coercive environment obstructing their return. Instead of establishing a system facilitating the return of the children, the authorities have sought their long-term placement with families or in institutions in the RF”
“Most deportations and transfers of children investigated have not been temporary as required by law in the case of evacuation. On the contrary, Russian authorities at the highest levels of government have coordinated actions to facilitate the long-term placement of the children in the RF”.
The fact that four children are still ‘available’ on a Russian state adoption site is yet more evidence of these crimes.
See also:
Nearly 1200 Ukrainian children abducted to Russia and placed with Russian families
