In March, the UN Human Rights Council’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine found that Russia had systematically deported and forcibly transferred Ukrainian children. These activities violate the provisions of international human rights laws and are classified as war crimes as well as crimes against humanity.
It also found that Russian authorities had “unreasonably delayed” the repatriation of Ukrainian children, which counts as a separate war crime.
How many Ukrainian children live in Russia?
Bring Kids Back UA, an initiative of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, says it has records of about 20,570 abducted Ukrainian children.
“And these are the cases on which we have more or less sufficient data,” project leader Maxim Maksimov told DW. “The true number is probably much higher.”
Statements from Russian officials appear to support this claim. For example, in 2023, Russia revealed that it had “acquired” 744,000 children. That same year, Maximov told DW, Russia reported to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child that 46,000 Ukrainian children had received Russian passports.
The numbers are difficult to verify, and media reports vary widely. Children who have been successfully returned to Ukraine will sometimes talk about other missing children not recorded in Ukraine’s database.
Identifying the children and determining their whereabouts is additionally complicated by Russia’s lack of access to occupied Ukrainian territory.
“Russian authorities are making arrangements to place the children in the long-term care of Russian families and facilities,” Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office told DW. “By doing so, they are violating international law that recognizes the right to reunification of families separated in armed conflict.”
How many children have been brought back so far?
So far, Ukraine has managed to locate and repatriate 2,126 children who were either deported to Russia, forcibly transferred to the occupied territory, or subjected to Russian “re-education”.
Maksimov described two mechanisms for returning abducted Ukrainian children. One is through mediation, in which case Russian authorities receive lists of names of Ukrainian children and a human rights commissioner then negotiates their return to Ukraine.
However, Maksimov says, “not every mediation helps us bring back more than ten children at a time.”
The second method is “organized repatriation.” Maximov says civil society groups play a big role in this.
“Sometimes this method makes it possible to bring more children back together, but I’m not allowed to talk about how it works,” he told DW.
From exile to ‘re-education’
He added, “The children who have been rescued are completely disoriented when they arrive.” “They distrust adults.”
He says that one can clearly understand that the Ukrainian children who were deported to Russia were given an ideological indoctrination. Without being subjected to further “re-education”, these children receive reintegration and rehabilitation assistance upon their return.
The Ukrainian Initiative says that throughout the war, Russia’s goal of capturing Ukrainian children has remained unchanged. What has changed, however, are the methods employed. For example, in 2022 and 2023, there were more instances of mass resettlement, in which groups of children were removed from children’s homes and transferred to the occupied Crimea peninsula or to Russia.
Maximov says that after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova on charges of participating in the unlawful deportation and transfer of children, Russian authorities changed their stance.
“They have created a multi-layered process in the occupied territories,” he explains. “It extends from militarization to indoctrination and brain-washing to ‘Russification’ and issuing Russian passports, ensuring that children grow up with a Russian mentality.”
An estimated 1.6 million Ukrainian children live in Russian-occupied territory. Russian schools and paramilitary organizations abound there. Classrooms are visited by “war heroes” fighting for Ukraine, and students cannot access Ukrainian information sources.
Militarization of children and youth
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office says it is filing separate charges against Russia for promoting military service to children and providing children with military and “patriotic” education. Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko has said that schools and universities in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory have switched to the Russian curriculum.
“This means that Ukraine’s language, history and culture are being suppressed,” he told DW. “We are seeing that education is being systematically valued for the assimilation and militarization of children in the occupied territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson. Children are being ideologically trained in these so-called ‘re-education camps’.”
He lists Eunarmia [the Young Army Cadets National Movement]dvizheniye pervikh [the Movement of the First] and voin [the Center for Military-sports Training and Patriotic Upbringing] In the form of paramilitary youth movements that train children to wield weapons, and force them to swear allegiance to Russia.
“It’s not about education, it’s about preparing them for war,” says Kravchenko.
They suspect that Russia plans to increase the number of youth enrolled in such movements to 250,000 by 2030, and specifically targets children in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory to do so.
At least 6,000 Ukrainian children were recruited into the Youth Cadet movement between 2019 and 2025. Kravchenko says there have been cases of Ukrainian children reaching legal age and then fighting against Ukraine.
These have been classified as war crimes. Charges were being filed against 18 people, and a total of 30 people were under suspicion. DW is told that two have been sentenced so far.
Andrey Pasternak is the head of the Security Service of Ukraine’s Joint Center for the Search and Release of Prisoners of War. He says children are increasingly being militarized in Russian-occupied territories, and added that Ukrainian authorities were already holding prisoners aged 19 to 20 who were fighting for Russia.
He explains that these prisoners were born in the Donbass region, re-educated to fight for Russia and then recruited into the Russian army. “They are sending Ukrainians to fight Ukrainians,” Pasternak said in April at a civil society conference for the Bring Kids Back UA initiative.
How does the international community support?
At the end of 2025, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on the return of Ukrainian children that authorizes Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict Vanessa Frazier to request information on the children, ensure humanitarian access to them and ensure their safe return.
The International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children, which currently includes more than 40 countries and organizations, also supports the proposal. The platform coordinates measures to help Ukrainian authorities locate, return and reintegrate children. It also helps in documenting and investigating war crimes.
Maksimov says Ukraine has already proposed ways in which international partners can support the initiative’s efforts, such as helping locate abducted individuals, or verifying data to facilitate their return.
This article was originally published in Ukrainian and was adapted from German.