Yale researchers have estimated how many Ukrainian children may be held by Russia

A team of experts from Yale University has estimated that around 35,000 Ukrainian children listed as missing may be held in Russia or Russian-occupied territories.

Source: The Guardian

Details: Many of these children may have been adopted, sent to military camps or placed in foster care. As a result, some families are forced to take desperate and risky measures – travelling to Russia on their own in search of their children.

In February 2022, as Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian forces began taking children en masse – abducting them from orphanages, taking them after the deaths of their parents, or forcibly removing them from their families.

In an interview with Guardian journalists, a Ukrainian woman named Nataliia described rescuing her two teenage sons who had been held in a Russian camp for nearly six months.

After Russian troops occupied her hometown of Kherson, a neighbour advised Nataliia to send her sons to a children’s camp in Anapa, a Russian resort town on the Black Sea.

"The 21-day trip was free and they were meant to return to Kherson at the end. The boys wanted to go too, but it was a big mistake on my part to allow it," Nataliia said.

When Ukrainian forces liberated Kherson in November 2022, Russia refused to allow her sons to return. Nataliia says the camp authorities would not release the boys unless she was physically present.

Eventually, with the help of a Ukrainian organisation, she obtained the necessary documents for her sons and crossed the border herself, travelling to Anapa. Nataliia passed through numerous border checkpoints, where she had to explain the purpose of her journey to Russian soldiers.

It took her six days to reach her sons, and they were finally reunited in February 2023.

"You cannot even imagine my emotions, because my children are all I have," Nataliia said.

Only 1,366 children have so far returned or escaped from Russia or Russian-occupied territories, according to the Ukrainian organisation Bring Kids Back. However, Russia may be unlawfully holding up to 35,000 children.

The Yale team has established the identities of thousands of children through extensive analysis of Russian databases, documents, family links and even satellite images of facilities, official buildings and other sources. 

There are fears that many have been taken by Russian forces and sent to military camps, put in foster care, or adopted by Russian families.

"This is likely the largest child abduction in war since World War II – comparable to the Germanification of Polish children by the Nazis," said Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab.

He stressed the importance of such research to "document that these children have been forcibly deported".

"Taking a child from one ethnic or national group and making them part of another ethnic or national group – that’s a war crime," Raymond noted.

The return of Ukrainian children remains a key demand in any future negotiations.

Quote from Raymond: "When Russians started out, they thought they were going to be victorious quickly, so this programme was rolled out, not to take these kids and hold them, but to be able to Russify Ukraine.

But because things started to go south quickly, they had to move their propaganda from the liability concealment phase to using these children as hostages to be leveraged in the negotiations."

Read more: Ukrainian teen reunited with family after Russian occupation splits them apart

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