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On December 3, 2024, the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab released a report titled “Russia’s Systematic Program of the Coerced Adoption and Fostering of Ukraine’s Children.”
Andriy Yermak, Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, welcomed the report, stating: “Russia must end its denials of coerced adoption and provide a register of all children from Ukraine it is forcibly detaining. Ukraine will not rest until our children are returned home and those responsible are held accountable.”
Vice Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine and Minister of Justice, Olga Stefanishyna, emphasized: “This report shows that Russian authorities are not merely manipulating the fates of these children but are intentionally erasing their Ukrainian identity. Ukraine will continue to work tirelessly to bring every child back and hold those responsible accountable. We urge the international community to increase pressure on Russia to stop these horrific crimes.”
This report is the result of 20 months of meticulous research under the Conflict Observatory program, making it the most detailed analysis to date of Russia’s systematic attempts to erase Ukrainian identity through illegal deportation, coerced adoption, and re-education.
The findings reveal that at least 314 Ukrainian children have been unlawfully removed from their homes and placed with Russian families or institutions across 21 regions in Russia. Many of these children have already been subjected to forced citizenship changes, and their profiles in official databases have been altered to obscure their Ukrainian origins.
The report highlights the experiences of children forcibly taken from occupied territories, predominantly Donetsk and Luhansk. These children were detained in Russian facilities for months, where they were subjected to intense propaganda and re-education. Tactics included renaming children, altering their citizenship, and placing them in permanent adoption or guardianship arrangements with Russian families.
Nathaniel Raymond, Executive Director of the Humanitarian Research Lab, stated that 67 of the 314 identified Ukrainian children have been naturalized as Russian citizens. The majority of these children originate from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. However, it is likely that additional children in the databases come from other Ukrainian regions, such as Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, and Kherson.
The international community must respond to these alarming findings. We demand that Russia immediately disclose the identities and locations of all Ukrainian children!