Canada imposes sanctions on eight individuals involved in the deportation and militarisation of Ukrainian children

Kyiv, 11 September 2026

The Government of Canada has added eight individuals to its sanctions list over their involvement in the unlawful deportation and forcible transfer of Ukrainian children, as well as their exposure to indoctrination and militarisation. The measures entered into force on 4 September 2026 and were announced during the visit of the President of Ukraine to Canada.

Canada is a co-chair of the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children and one of the states working systematically to establish the personal responsibility of those who run Russia’s machinery for removing and re-educating children.

Maksym Maksymov, Head of Bring Kids Back UA:

“We thank the Government of Canada for this decision — Canada consistently keeps the issue of Ukrainian children on the international agenda, both as a co-chair of the Coalition and as a state that turns this into concrete action. Every decision of this kind makes responsibility personal. Behind the deportations there are no abstract ‘circumstances of war’, but specific people with names and positions: officials, heads of youth movements, directors of boarding institutions. Canada’s sanctions put this on the record and narrow the space in which these people can act with impunity. Until every Ukrainian child is home, the pressure on those involved in their abduction must only increase.”

The individuals sanctioned are:

Grigory Gurov — Head of the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs (Rosmolodezh) and former Chairman of the Board of the children and youth movement “Movement of the First”. He implements programmes that involve removing Ukrainian children from the temporarily occupied territories to Russia and integrating them into the Russian educational system.

Artur Orlov — Chairman of the Board of the all-Russian children and youth movement “Movement of the First”. He heads an organisation that conducts so-called “military-patriotic education” of Ukrainian children in the occupied territories, prepares them for service in the Russian army and takes them on “excursions” to Moscow. In December 2024, together with the occupation governor of Kherson region Volodymyr Saldo, he opened a branch of the movement in the occupied part of the region.

Denis Chernobay — Head of the so-called regional branch of the “Movement of the First” in occupied Donetsk. Born in Makiivka, he leads a structure that draws children from the occupied territories into Russian youth and militarised programmes.

Vladimir Khromov — An official in the office of the Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights, a body that is a key element of the system of removing Ukrainian children and “placing” them with Russian families and institutions.

Elena Milskaya — Chair of the Board of Trustees of Russia’s National Centre for Assistance to Missing and Affected Children and President of the Archangel Michael Foundation. Under the guise of charity and volunteering, she used the centre’s volunteers as cover for removing Ukrainian children, including orphans, from the temporarily occupied territories to Russia — in October 2022 to Krasnodar Krai via occupied Crimea.

Aleksandr Kurenkov — Russia’s Minister for Emergency Situations and a member of the Russian military-industrial commission. Canada included him in the package among those involved in the removal of Ukrainian children and their indoctrination.

Vitaliy Suk — Director of the Oleshki boarding institution for children with disabilities in occupied Kherson region. Ukrainian by origin, he sided with the occupation administration and controlled the fate of the children in the institution. He is under Ukrainian sanctions.

Alexandra Kulgina — An official in the youth structures of the occupation administration in Donetsk, involved in drawing children and young people from the occupied territories into Russian “youth” and labour programmes.

According to the Government of Canada, with the new package Canadian sanctions against Russia now cover more than 3,500 individuals and entities, with more than 600 shadow-fleet vessels listed separately.