In 2022, the Russian orphaned children database had 2,500 more new entries compared to the average number from the last six years. Media outlet IStories speculates that this difference could be the number of children deported from Ukraine.
According to Russia’s Ministry of Education, in 2022 the number of children registered in the database increased significantly in 21 regions. The highest number of “surplus” records appeared in the Rostov region (573 children), Moscow (460), and the Nizhny Novgorod region (388).
There is no way to verify that all of these children were taken out of Ukraine seeing as the database does not provide the needed information. Nevertheless, the media outlet got confirmation in two regions that children deported from Ukraine now get registered in the database.
“We have orphans arriving from DPR and LPR (Donetsk and Luhansk “people’ republics” — translator’s note). They move residences and immediately, accordingly, get registered at the [new] residence and end up in the database as a matter of course,” the Nizhny Novgorod region Ministry of Social Politics told IStories. The journalists were given the same information in the Education Department of Yamalia.
Before, the Russian authorities found guardians for the deported children on a case-by-case basis, an employee of the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Ksenia Khell, told IStories. That was how the system operated from 2014. However, according to Khell, since the start of the war the Russian authorities have taken so many children out of Ukraine that the existing system stopped functioning.
“They kidnapped more children than the entire system, created in 2014 with the guardians, is able to deal with.
“All the couples that previously took in children without issues, have by now already taken someone else in, and there’s nowhere for the children to go. In particular, adding the kids to the database is one of the ways of solving this problem,” Khell said.
Among the deported children there are not only orphans taken from Ukrainian children’s homes but also those whose parents were killed in shelling.
“Out of all the children that we’ve received, I think, only one was an actual orphan, the rest had parents who had been killed over there,” an official from Yamalia’s Education Department told IStories.
At the end of March, Ukrainian news agency UNIAN reported that Ukraine has information about 19,154 Ukrainian children illegally deported to Russia. Among them are over 4,000 orphans.
In autumn 2022, children from the occupied regions of Ukraine were sent “on a vacation” to children’s camps in Crimea. The occupation “authorities” assured the parents that they would be brought back in two weeks, but the children were never returned to them. Press secretary of the Save Ukraine foundation Olha Erokhina says that they are aware of at least two cases of abuse towards these children.
Furthermore, Russia took out orphans from the occupied territories. In particular, media outlet Verstka reported that 108 children from Donbas, ages 5-16, had been adopted by Russian parents.
The ICC considers illegal deportation of Ukrainian children from the occupied territories to Russia a war crime. On suspicion of committing this crime, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova.
