Russia is enacting a mass deportation of Ukrainian children in an attempt to wipe out their Ukrainian identity with forced Russification, Kyiv and multiple NGOs say.
Daily Express US spoke to several experts in the field who outlined the horrors these children – and sometimes their parents – face as they are forcibly deported from their homes and taken to the occupied territories of Ukraine or Russia.
Moscow claims it has “evacuated” 744,000 children from Ukraine. However, Daria Herasymchuk – the advisor to President Zelensky on Children’s Rights and Rehabilitation – told Daily Express US there is no way this number could be accurate.
Still, her office estimates a staggering 200,000 to 300,000 children have been deported but due to a lack of documentation the current official number is around 19,600. Of these, only 385 children have been returned to Ukraine and reunited with their families.
“Some of those children are being sent to health institutions in Russia, to camps in Russia or Belarus or directly to [Russian] foster families illegally. They don’t let the children contact their parents. They are using every possible way to separate them from their biological parents,” Ms. Heraymchuk said.
Russian authorities in occupied Ukraine use various methods to separate children from their parents or families. In some cases, a child’s biological parents may have died in the war – and there have also been reports of Russian authorities taking children from state-run orphanages.
Other times, they send children to Russia under dubious conditions including fake urgent medical care without the option of return. They even coerce parents into sending their own children away from potential combat zones.
In a case documented by the NGO Where are Our People? – which aims to shed light on Russian deportations – a 10-year-old child, Pasha, and his mother were separated from their father and husband, Denys, when Ukraine liberated the eastern city of Kupiansk, Kharkiv Oblast where they lived in September last year.
Although Denys was in the now-liberated territory, Pasha and his mother were visiting his grandmother and were now separated by the frontlines.
They attempted to flee the besieged city to Russia where they planned to escape to Europe when their convoy was shelled, allegedly by Moscow. Pasha’s mother was killed while the wounded 10-year-old, now alone, was taken further into occupied territory by Russian troops.
The father and son were only reunited after Denys’s mother-in-law traveled through Europe and Russia to reclaim the child in occupied Luhansk. They travelled to Russia where authorities pressured them to take an apartment and citizenship. Although they managed to eventually escape to the Czech Republic, Pasha is traumatized by the horrific ordeal.
Others remain in Russian occupied Ukraine separated from their families, according to Kyiv as well as NGOs working to reunite them.
The conditions in Russia can be bleak for the children who are sometimes tortured for expressing their Ukrainian identity. Kids are only allowed to speak and learn in the Russian language.
“Children have been put in isolation for several weeks, they have been starved and beaten with sticks by the authorities. This also happens when children don’t agree to speak Russian when they talk about Ukraine or say they want to go home,” she said.
Mykola Kuleba, the founder and CEO of Save Ukraine and the former Ombudsman for Children with the office of the President of Ukraine from 2014 to 2021, told a similar story.
His organization runs a rescue network working to return forcefully deported Ukrainians – not just for children but also for the elderly and women who have experienced sexual violence at the hands of the invaders.
“What Russia is doing is like if my neighbor came to my house with a weapon, killed me, raped my wife and killed her, then burned my house down before saving my kids from the burning house,” said Kuleba.
In April, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) said documentation of children having to go through a process of “Russification” matches with the international definition of genocide.
Speaking by video-link from Kyiv, Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska described meeting children who were victims’ of abduction attempts.
She told the parliamentarians: “The Hague Court has named two suspects, but in reality there are thousands of them, because this is not an accidental crime. It is a whole policy, and a whole conscious mechanism by Russia – to alienate our children, depriving them of their families, names, language, roots.”
The Belarus Red Cross sparked outrage in Ukraine and by the Belarusian opposition after its role was revealed in the transfer of Ukrainian children from Russia-occupied territories to Belarus.
It drew criticism from the International Federation of Red and Red Crescent Societies – the supranational body that ties the national Red Cross and Red Crescent groups together – after being described by the Belarus Red Cross CEO on state TV.
Russia justifies the deportations by claiming it is saving children from an active warzone but Moscow started the war. With just a handful of children returned to Ukraine, the problem of forced deportations persists.
Images are for illustrative purposes only. Interview with Daria Heraymchuk translated with the help of Yegor Kapustynskyi via PR Army of Ukraine.
Follow our social media accounts here on http://facebook.com/ExpressUSNews and ExpressUSNews
