According to the Bring Kids Back initiative, as of July 1st, 2025, there have been 19,546 reports of unlawful deportations and forced transfers of Ukrainian children. The Minister of Reintegration of Occupied territories claimed that 4,396 abducted children are orphans. Only 1,247 children have been returned from Russia, Belarus and the occupied territories of Ukraine.

Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova claimed that Russia has “accepted 700,000” Ukrainian children since the invasion of Ukraine. It is unknown how many of those children have been forcibly taken to Russia, how many were unaccompanied and how many have left. Ukrainian officials estimate that approximately 200,000 children have been abducted by Russia since the full-scale invasion in 2022.

The exact number of abducted children is currently unknown due to the lack of access to the occupied territories and no cooperation by Russia on the issue.

Exact procedures of Russia’s abductions of children vary by situation. Generally speaking, there are four ways Russia takes children:

• Abduction of orphans. The most vulnerable targets are orphans who were in state facilities prior to the full-scale invasion. These children are moved to Russia under the pretext of being evacuated to safety from the invasion.
• Through filtration camps. Interrogation camps, also known as filtration camps, have been used to separate parents from their children. If a parent is suspected to be a threat, they are taken to prison or further interrogation while children are being sent to orphanages in occupied territories and Russia without notifying the parent.
• From hospitals. Hospitalized children are separated from their parents and forcibly transferred into Russian-occupied territories or Russia. Parents can be coerced into giving their “consent” for these transfers under duress, with conditional access to life-saving medical procedures used as leverage.
• Directly from families. Parents in occupied areas are often coerced to send their children to “recreational camps” in Russia. Many of the kids are never returned. Parents are lured in to retrieve their children hence forced to collaborate with the occupying government: receive passports and record videos praising the Russian state.

Russia presents abduction of Ukrainian children as a rescue mission, but children are taken to Russia under coercion and deception.

Ukrainian children are subject to heavy indoctrination: singing the Russian national anthem, studying history according to the Russian worldview, paramilitary education and forced visits to the Russian Orthodox Church. They are stripped of their national identity and punished for speaking Ukrainian. Children do not receive appropriate medical treatment and are subjected to physical, sexual and psychological abuse as well as the risk of being trafficked and exploited.

YHRL has confirmed the existence of at least 43 facilities across Russia and Russian-occupied territories for abducted Ukrainian children. Of these, 32 are re-education facilities that are heavily dispersed, with 11 located over 500 miles from Ukraine, including two in Siberia and one in Russia’s East.

In December 2023, the YHRL also confirmed the involvement of Belarus in the Russian policy of forced deportations: at least 2,442 Ukrainian children have been transported to 13 facilities in Belarus of which nine are involved in re-education, military training, or unknown medical activities.

Even children not technically abducted by Russia, but those in occupied territories of Ukraine, are subject to aggressive indoctrination and constant risk of being abducted. Despite a huge risk to their safety, many of them still secretly study in Ukrainian schools online.

In May 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree providing for a simplified procedure to impose Russian citizenship on Ukrainian “children left without parental care and incapacitated persons,” legalizing the abduction process.

The Yale Human Research Laboratory (YHRL) identified 314 Ukrainian children placed in Russia’s program of coerced adoption and fostering since February 2022 – 208 of which have already been placed in a Russian family, or have had Russians as their guardians.

Real numbers are much higher: a single Russian regional website alone advertised the adoption of 1,000 children from Mariupol. High-ranking Russian officials, such as Maria Lvova-Belova and former Chairman of the Federation Council Sergei Mironov, have adopted abducted Ukrainian children from occupied Mariupol and Kherson, respectively.

The adoption process is often accompanied by sibling separation, the change of personal information and erasure of the paper trail, effectively destroying any chance for parents or Ukrainian authorities to search for a child.

Russia’s forcible transfer and deportation of Ukrainian children to its territory puts it in direct violation of the UN Genocide Convention that includes “forcibly transferring children of the [national, ethnical, racial or religious] group to another group,” as a marker of genocide.

Russia’s systematic separation of children from parents and mistreatment of children violates multiple articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

In a UN Human Rights Council report dated March 15, 2023, the Commission concluded that “the situations it has examined concerning the transfer and deportation of children, within Ukraine and to the Russian Federation respectively, violate international humanitarian law, and amount to a war crime.”

On March 17th, 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova for their roles in the forcible transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia.

The International Federation of the Red Cross expelled the Belarus Red Cross Society as a result of their refusal to dismiss Mr. Dimitry Shevtsov - the Secretary General of the Belarus chapter, who publicly admitted his involvement in the abduction of Ukrainian children to Belarus.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) officially recognized Russia’s responsibility for abduction of Ukrainian children. The ruling confirms that Russia is guilty, among other crimes, of forced deportations, and efforts to erase Ukrainian identity through re-education and the forced relocation of Ukrainian children and adults to Russia.