Special Services

From the beginning of the Russian aggression against Ukraine, Poland has been involved in documenting war crimes committed by the Russian invader. One of such crimes is abducting and transporting  Ukrainian children to the territory of the Russian Federation and subjecting them to forced Russification.

The high intensity of Russian military operations in Ukraine makes it difficult to establish precise data on this phenomenon. Nonetheless, estimated data, usually from the beginning of the war, provided both by Ukrainian and international institutions, well show the criminal mechanisms that the Russian Federation applies against the civilian population in the territories it occupies.

According to the data presented by the commissioner of the President of Ukraine for children's rights Daria Herasymchuk, from the beginning of the aggression in February 2022 to May of the same year, over 1 million Ukrainians were transported to Russia, including about 181,000 children. At the same time, the Russian side informed about approx. 183,000. children taken to the Russian Federation. In the summer months of 2022, the Russians already reported 307,000 Ukrainian children transferred to Russia. We deal with a mass practice whose aim is to denationalize Ukraine and destroy the Ukrainian nation.

Based on the accounts of Ukrainian children who returned from Russia, there are five scenarios used by Russians to transport children from Ukraine to the Russian Federation:

- transporting children whose parents died as a result of warfare;

- kidnapping children directly from their families;

- separation of children from parents during filtration procedures;

- encouraging economically disadvantaged parents to send their children to Russia, ostensibly for holidays or medical treatment;

- transferring entire orphanages to the Russian Federation.

After being taken to Russia, the children are to be subjected to Russification by issuing Russian passports and placing them in Russian families. Families who decide to adopt Ukrainian children are offered one-time financial support.

In many cases, juveniles, like adult citizens of Ukraine, are transported and placed in areas of Russia located at a significant distance from the Ukrainian-Russian border. These procedures include also filtration process. Some juveniles are taken to filtration camps, and from there they are transported to the Russian Federation.

There are many indications that the operation of sending adult and minor citizens of Ukraine to remote regions of the Russian Federation was planned in advance, and is currently being implemented in accordance with the predetermined needs of particular regions. In addition, the decree of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin of May 2022 introduced simplified regulations for granting Russian citizenship to children from Ukraine - orphaned and without parental care. In July, similar regulations applied to all citizens of Ukraine. These legal changes also prove the planned nature of Russia's relocation activities.

The practice of abducting Ukrainian children is one of the components of the crime of genocide committed by the Russians against the Ukrainian nation.

Stanisław Żaryn

Government Plenipotentiary for the Security of Information Space of the Republic of Poland