October 6, 2026
UK sanctions seven individuals involved in the deportation and re-education of Ukrainian children
The list includes the chair of Russia's Movement of the First, the heads of its branches in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, and the chair of the board of trustees of the National Centre for Assistance to Missing and Injured Children.
KYIV, 2 October 2026. The United Kingdom has sanctioned seven individuals involved in Russia's programme for the forced deport..ation and "re-education" of Ukrainian children. They are part of a 31-designation package announced on 1 October by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office. The designated individuals face asset freezes, travel bans, trust services sanctions and director disqualification.
They include Artur Orlov, Chair of the Board of the Movement of the First, a Russian state-public movement for children and young people. Orlov is a Russian officer, a tank battalion commander and a participant in the war against Ukraine, whom Putin appointed to lead the movement in 2024. Five heads of the movement's regional branches in the temporarily occupied parts of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions and Crimea were also sanctioned: Denis Chernobay, Ruyal Aliyev, Aleksey Lavrentyev, Viktoriya Kostromina and Ekaterina Kozyr.
Russia created the Movement of the First in 2022 on Putin's initiative as one of its tools for militarising children. According to the report of the OSCE Moscow Mechanism expert mission, the movement claims more than 344,600 members in the occupied territories alone.
The list also includes Elena Milskaya, Chair of the Board of Trustees of Russia's National Centre for Assistance to Missing and Injured Children. According to Ukraine's Defence Intelligence (HUR), in October 2022 she used the centre's volunteers as cover for the mass abduction and unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children, including orphans, from the occupied territories to Krasnodar Krai via occupied Crimea.
At least three of the seven — Orlov, Chernobay and Milskaya — had already been sanctioned by Canada, and Milskaya by the EU as well.
The UK also sanctioned eight individuals for the arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment of civilians in the temporarily occupied territories, including in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. They include Viktor Bedrik, military commandant of the occupied Kherson region, and the heads of the occupation police and a detention facility in Kamianka-Dniprovska.
"The Movement of the First in the occupied territories is not an after-school club. It is a conveyor belt through which Russia turns Ukrainian children into Russian soldiers for a war against their own homeland. The UK has named the people running this conveyor belt, from Crimea to Luhansk. We thank the United Kingdom: everyone who commits crimes against Ukrainian children must know they will answer for it personally," said Maksym Maksymov, Head of Bring Kids Back UA.
"These people are already under Canadian sanctions, and now British ones as well. When the same names appear on the lists of different countries, they have fewer places to hide their money or to hide themselves. We call on other partners to align their decisions: there must be no safe jurisdiction left for those who deport and militarise Ukrainian children," said Vladyslav Vlasiuk, Commissioner of the President of Ukraine for Sanctions Policy.
"We are targeting both the revenues that help sustain Russia's aggression and perpetrators of horrendous crimes against Ukrainian civilians, including children. The UK will not flinch in our support for Ukraine," said UK Minister for Europe Lord Wood of Anfield.
The UK government's statement noted that millions of Ukrainian children under occupation are put through Kremlin propaganda programmes, including training in weapons handling and drone operation. These programmes are designed to strip children of their Ukrainian identity and prepare them to serve the state attacking their homeland.