Russians handed under “preliminary custody” over a thousand children deported from Ukraine

Russian authorities transferred to “preliminary custody” 1,184 children deported from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. The number is three times more than what was earlier declared publicly.

This news is reported by the Russian independent publication Vazhnye Istorii [Important Stories].

Photo: ArmyInform

At the end of 2022, the Commissioner for Children’s Rights in Russia, Maria Lvova-Belova, stated that 380 children taken from Ukraine had already been placed in Russian families. However, she noted the same number during her public appearances in the spring and summer of 2023.

According to the data collected by Vazhnye Istorii, at least three times more children may be transferred to Russian families than the official claims.

According to the report on the activities of the government of the Rostov region for 2022, 1,184 children who arrived “without legal representatives from the territories of Donbas and Ukraine” were transferred to temporary custody.

From this statement, it is not clear what status these children have. In particular, these may be orphans who lived in orphanages in the occupied territories or lost their parents during the war. In such a case, Lvova-Belova deliberately underestimates the data on Ukrainian children handed for upbringing in Russian families.

This number could also include children who left for Russia with other relatives while their parents remained in the occupied territories. In addition, pupils of children’s institutions, who were taken en masse to Russia, can be considered. The director of the institution usually takes guardianship of such children.

Not all of the 1,184 children remained in the Rostov region, as the Russian Ministry of Education reports that in 2022, only 534 children were placed in foster care in this region. This may indicate that the rest of the children were taken to other areas.

According to data from open sources, Vazhnye Istorii established the whereabouts of 290 children from Ukraine in 23 regions of Russia.

Most of them, 47 children, are in the Novosibirsk region. At least 30 children ended up in families in the Moscow region, 25 in the Kaluga region, and 24 in the Nizhnyhorod region. Another 21 deported children live in the families of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District and 20 in the Leningrad region. Less than 20 children were taken to the rest of the areas of Russia.

Four subjects (Penza, Rostov, Kostroma, and Novgorod regions) were mentioned in the news as regions with deported children, but their total number is unknown.

All these children were probably given to Russian families from April to October 2022, since from November, news about the mass placement of deported children into care stopped appearing in the media. Only isolated cases were reported by journalists.

Previously, the Representative of the President of Ukraine for Children’s Rights and Child Rehabilitation, Daria Gerasymchuk, emphasized that the problem of the deportation of children also lies in the fact that Ukraine does not know where these children are, so it is challenging to find them.

Meanwhile, the Russian authorities do everything to hide them: they immediately issue Russian citizenship to the children, constantly move them or send them to be raised by Russian families, changing their names.

Furthermore, Russians greatly influence the consciousness of Ukrainian children. So, even after spending only a few months in Russia, children return with great psychological trauma.

For the adoption of Ukrainian children, Russian families receive amounts ranging from 28 to 156 thousand rubles (~ from $315 to $1,755) per month. There are known cases when Russian families came from the far regions of the Russian Federation to the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine and adopted 10-12 children at once.

On 17 March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued warrants of arrest for two individuals in the context of the situation in Ukraine: Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, for suspicion of bearing responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation and unlawful transfer of population from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, including Ukrainian children.