Ukraine and Its Abducted Children: Will Justice Prevail?

It would appear that in pursuing his "mission" to transform Ukraine into a vassal of Moscow and expunge the identity of the Ukrainian people, no crime is too vile for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine that began in 2022 presents a sordid record of terror and war crimes. Hospitals and schools have been targeted. And when the initial Russian drive to take Kyiv was turned back, vengeful Russian soldiers responded with brutality. They turned the city of Bucha into a hellscape of rape, torture, and massacre.

Even now, Ukrainian POWs and other civilians in Russian custody are being systematically tortured. This mirrors how Ukrainian nationalists and other "enemies of the people" were treated during Soviet times. Then, as now, they are labeled "fascists" or "Nazis."

But perhaps Putin's greatest crime is his campaign to abduct and brainwash Ukrainian children, often in "reeducation camps," to "Russify" them.

*An explosion in Kyiv, Ukraine, following a Russian military attack on May 7, 2025 (©Reuters / Kyodo)*

ICC Warrants and Mounting Charges

In March 2023, Pre-Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for two Russian officials. One was President Vladimir Putin. The other was Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova. She is the Commissioner for Children's Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation. They are accused of being responsible for the war crimes of unlawful deportation and transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.

An exclusive report appeared on April 30 in the Substack newsletter Spy Talk. Veteran investigative journalist Michael Isikoff wrote that, according to a reliable source, prosecutors at the International Criminal Court "have begun preparing potential new charges against Putin and possibly other top Russian officials for 'crimes against humanity.'"

Reportedly, prosecutors in The Hague have already begun drafting warrants. They hope to get final approval from ICC judges for issuing the warrants soon. According to Isikoff's source, "The planes are on the tarmac…They're waiting for clearance from the tower."

A Coordinated Campaign of Child Abduction

The additional charges against Putin and his accomplices are based, at least in part, on significant new evidence of widespread abductions. This evidence is detailed in a new Conflict Observatory report by the Yale School of Public Health. Funded by the US State Department, the report draws on unclassified imagery from US satellites. It also accesses flight data produced by the Russian government itself.

This research is the most extensive public effort to date to track the stolen children of Ukraine. The report reads in part, "Yale HRl has determined with high confidence that the Russian Federation has engaged in the systematic, intentional and widespread coerced adoption and fostering of children from Ukraine."

It is forbidden by international law for an occupying power to transfer civilians from their home territory. Furthermore, children enjoy special protection under the Geneva Convention.

Shrinking Support for War Crimes Investigations

However, funding for the project to trace abductions of young Ukrainians runs out on May 16. In the meantime, Donald Trump's administration has been closing down offices documenting Russian war crimes and reassigning analysts who handled that work.

Putin's existing arrest warrant has prevented him from traveling freely. He risks arrest in any of the more than 120 countries and territories that are signatories to the Rome Statute, which established the ICC. However, Russia, China, and the United States do not recognize the court's jurisdiction. (Out of concern that US soldiers might be subject to prosecution, the US declined to sign.)

Indoctrination, Citizenship, and Coercion

According to a United Nations human rights report released in March 2025, conditions for children in Russian-occupied Ukraine have sharply deteriorated. Since Russia annexed four regions of Ukraine in late 2022, Moscow has imposed Russian citizenship on Ukrainian children. They have also enforced the Russian school curriculum and restricted access to education in the Ukrainian language.

Besides being force-fed Russian war propaganda, Ukrainian children have also been required to participate in military-patriotic training. One teenage boy subjected to such a camp regimen said that the military training was to prepare older boys so they later could "be sent to fight against fellow Ukrainians."

*A hospital building in Sumy Oblast, northeastern Ukraine, attacked by Russia (Provided by the National Police of Ukraine, Reuters / Kyodo)*

Russian authorities in occupied areas of Ukraine have also started to push a pronatalist policy to encourage Ukrainian girls to become pro-Russian mothers. Their aim is for these girls to raise several children loyal to the Russian state, while the boys grow up to serve Moscow either as soldiers or in some other capacity.

Such actions blatantly violate international humanitarian law, which obliges an occupying power to protect children and respect their national identity.

Mass Deportation and 'Motherland' Narrative

On April 30, 2025, the Institute for the Study of War published a Russian Occupation Update.
It reported that Russia is planning a large-scale deportation of Ukrainian children. Tens of thousands — 53,000 by one count — are to be sent to summer camps across occupied Ukraine and Russia. Some of these camps are located in unsafe areas of Crimea. The summer experience is designed to expose Ukrainian youth to the "culture and way of life of the Motherland."

Such violations of human rights seem to be appropriate in the minds of Putin and other Russian ultranationalists. They believe that Russia has the "right" to reclaim all the territories it once ruled. That would include, among several now independent nations, Poland, Finland, and the Baltic States.

Historical Fantasy and Imperial Ambition

In 2021, while preparing to invade Ukraine, Vladimir Putin published the widely publicized essay On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians. In it, he claimed that Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians are one people. He described them as "parts of what is essentially the same historical and spiritual space."

The distorted history lesson he presents in the essay is essentially meant to allow Putin to portray himself as the champion of Russian divine destiny. It is very much a case of resurrecting the old method of conquest employed by Imperial Russia: absorb neighboring territory and then claim that it had always been part of "Mother Russia."

Anyone who believes that Putin will respect a "permanent" ceasefire and be satisfied with the parts of Ukraine he has already annexed is sorely deluded. He will be no more satisfied than Adolf Hitler was when he was awarded the Sudetenland at Munich in 1938.

Vladimir may not choose to stop. Meanwhile, pressure is mounting. In late April, Japan joined other G7 countries in a coalition seeking to bring children abducted by Russia back to Ukraine.

Author: John Carroll