«Կարծես թե նրանք «դուրս են գալիս պաշտամունքից».

• World World
• War in Ukraine War in Ukraine

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InvestigationTo date, 1,762 Ukrainian children have been repatriated after being forcibly transferred by Moscow. Ukrainians are working to de-indoctrinate them and are warning that today, all children living under occupation, Russified and militarized, are being torn from their country without even having to be physically deported.

In three and a half years of full-scale war, Oksana Lebedeva thought she had seen everything. But since she began caring for children repatriated to Ukraine after being forcibly transferred by Russia, the founder of the NGO Gen. Ukrainian discovered an even darker side of the conflict. "Their behavior is very different from children traumatized here by the conflict," she explained. "When they come back, after being indoctrinated by Russia, they don't speak, don't play, don't trust anyone and don't even look at you." One aspect particularly surprised her: "They are all extremely docile. That shocked us. They are ready to give everything and behave like little soldiers." She gives each child a notebook to write about their experience. One boy took a red marker and wrote in large letters: "Top secret."

To date, 1,762 Ukrainian children have been repatriated out of the 19,546 identified by Ukrainian authorities as having been deported to Russia or forcibly transferred within occupied territories. Moscow began mass transfers of these children at the beginning of its invasion in February 2022. Since then, Ukraine has worked to recover these "stolen children," some of whom were adopted by Russian families, with Moscow erasing their identities by changing their names and dates of birth, and moving them around frequently. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the commissioner for children's rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, for the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children. That same year, Russia boasted of having "welcomed more than 700,000 Ukrainian children."

The fate of these children torn from their country has provoked international outrage. But the threat has now grown, insist Ukrainian officials overseeing the issue. "The situation is much worse than at the start of the invasion," warned Maksym Maksymov, project manager for the Bring Kids Back Ukraine program, created by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to coordinate efforts by the government, partner countries and international organizations to return "kidnapped" children. "Today," Maksymov explained, "1.6 million Ukrainian children live in occupied territories and in Russia. Moscow is indoctrinating them with the same goal: to change their identity." He said it's important not to "focus solely on the figure of 20,000 deported children, because even if we manage to bring them back, it won't solve the problem. Today, Russia doesn't even need to physically transfer children to tear them from Ukraine; it does it psychologically and mentally."

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