Russia is trying to force Ukrainian children to become Russian, with reeducation, forcible transfers and camps

AI Summary

Russia is forcibly transferring tens of thousands of Ukrainian children and attempting to erase their Ukrainian identity through reeducation and relocations as part of its occupation strategy since 2014. The U.S. government is funding efforts to identify and aid the return and rehabilitation of these children.

A fence featuring 20,000 stuffed teddy bears, each representing a Ukrainian child abducted by Russia, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on April 23, 2026. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images “Crimes against humanity.” That’s what an investigation in March 2026 called Russia’s “deportation and forcible transfer” of Ukrainian children and “their enforced disappearance.” The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine wrote that “thousands of children have been deported to the Russian Federation or transferred to occupied areas in Ukraine by Russian authorities.” In response to the Russian actions, the U.S. State Department announced, also in March 2026, a new US$25 million effort to identify, return and rehabilitate Ukrainian children and young people forcibly transferred by Russia or otherwise held away from their families and communities. The programs are intended to support both the work of locating children and the services they need after returning. The U.S. announcement is important because bringing Ukrainian children home is a race against time. Russia is doing more than moving children. It is trying to remake them, from Ukrainians into Russians. This strategy did not begin with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Since occupying the portion of Ukraine known as Crimea and parts of Ukraine’s Donbas in 2014, Russia has steadily reshaped children’s education, legal status, language and sense of belonging. For many children growing up under occupation, it is the only life they have ever known. I have spent the past year and a half studying Russia’s treatment of Ukrainian children for my forthcoming book, “Child Abduction in the War in Ukraine: Erasing Ukrainian Identity as a Tool of War,” to be published open-access by Routledge in late fall 2026. The book draws on more than 50 interviews with returned young people, caregivers, Ukrainian officials, investigators, legal experts and child-protection advocates, together with government and nonprofit organization reports, international legal materials, historical research and open-source investigations. My research points to a simple conclusion: Russia is not just moving Ukrainian children. It is taking away their identities. Protesters gather in London on May 24, 2025, to demand the return of the Ukrainian children abducted by Russia. Alishia Abodunde/Getty Images Beyond the official count Ukraine’s Bring Kids Back UA, the official tracker of abducted children, lists over 20,000 possible cases of forcible deportation and transfer of children by Russia. However, Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab estimates the number is closer to 35,000. Only a fraction have returned. The precise number is difficult to establish because Russia has not provided complete or verifiable information about the Ukrainian children it has forcibly transferred or deported, or their whereabouts. International humanitarian law prohibits the forcible transfer or deportation of children from occupied territory except in narrowly defined emergency circumstances. Even then, evacuations must be temporary, preserve family unity, maintain records to facilitate reunification, and, when children must be moved outside occupied territory, take them to a neutral country rather than the territory of the occupying power. Instead, many Ukrainian children have been coercively transferred into camps – organized sites used to house, instruct, reeducate or militarize Ukrainian children – institutions and foster or adoptive placements inside Russia or Russian-controlled territory. Some are told Ukraine abandoned them, that their families no longer want them, or that their future lies with Russia. In many cases, their names, citizenship and legal status have been changed, making them more difficult to identify and return. But even the official Ukrainian count does not convey the full scale of the crisis. Approximately 1.6 million Ukrainian children are believed to be living under Russian occupation or in territories Russia has controlled since 2014. These children may never have crossed an international border, but their schools, documents, language, media and daily lives are being reorganized around Russian rule. They are required to attend schools using the Russian curriculum, where Ukrainian history and identity are replaced with Russian narratives. Ukrainian-language instruction has been eliminated in occupied areas, and many children have been issued or required to obtain Russian passports. These measures are designed not simply to govern occupied territory but to reshape how children understand their history, citizenship and future We investigated Russia’s military indoctrination of Ukrainian children in occupied territories – what we found was more shocking than we could have imagined A child does not have to be carried across a border to be separated from Ukraine. Occupa