Imagine every seat at the O2 Arena in London filled by a child. Now, imagine an invading force stealing every single one of those children, deporting them from their homeland, sending them to re-education camps, forcing them to live with the very same invading soldiers, and even conscripting them to fight against the country they were born in. What would the outrage be in Britain to such an atrocity?
When I visited Kyiv, last month, to mark the third bloody anniversary of Putin’s illegal invasion, I didn’t have to imagine this. Speaking to Ukraine’s Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights, I heard firsthand how this nightmare is very much a reality for Ukrainian mothers and fathers today.
Since Putin’s illegal invasion began on 24th February 2022, at least 19,546 Ukrainian children have been forcibly taken from their families and their homeland, although the true figure is likely to be much higher because Russia frequently targets vulnerable children without anyone to speak for them. Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which recently had its funding cut by the United States’ so-called Department of Government Efficiency, have placed the number of stolen children closer to 35,000.
The commissioner told me how children as young as eight months old have been ripped from their homes by Russian forces, with Russia denying the very existence of this child and many thousands more. Many have been placed with citizens of Russia or placed in institutions. Some have been listed on child placement databases, naturalised into Russia, as if they were children born in Russia. Some are conscripted to the so-called All-Russian Young Army Military Patriotic Social Movement — the Kremlin’s attempt to mobilise young Russian children and provide them with basic military skills before later joining Putin’s meatgrinder in the occupied territories in Ukraine.
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for president Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights for allegedly establishing and sanctioning Russia’s program of coerced adoption and fostering these stolen children — a war crime as defined in international law. There is strong evidence to support their direct involvement in the allegations. A report in December 2024 by Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, which has been undertaking vital work to track these children and document the war crimes exposed between May and October 2022, Russian Aerospace Forces — under the direct control of President Putin’s office — transported multiple groups of Ukrainian children to Russia on Russian Federation- flagged military transport plane.
The United Kingdom rightly recognises these crimes and the importance of the International Criminal Court in prosecuting those responsible. Indeed, we are also playing our part in funding the Bring Back Kids Initiative through the Partnership Fund for a Resilient Ukraine. The initiative launched by president Zelenskyy is uniting international agencies and organisations with the Ukrainian government to bring Russia’s crimes against humanity to an end by reuniting the stolen children of Ukraine with their families.
We must ensure that Russia provides a full register of all Ukrainian children currently in its custody, as mandated by the Geneva Conventions, and that Ukraine, with support from its allies and partners, secures a proper framework for their return, with housing, psychosocial, financial and other forms of support for their reintegration.
To achieve this, it is vital to ensure that there remains a focus on this critical issue, which has too often been forgotten in the national and international discourse of this conflict. That is why I have written to the foreign secretary, David Lammy, and defence secretary, John Healey, calling on them to recognise 17th July as a National Day of Action for the Stolen Children of Ukraine. The National Day of Action will be a day of significance that will seek to raise awareness of the issue and set out what more the United Kingdom can do to ensure that justice is served, and the stolen children of Ukraine are not forgotten. Befittingly, the 17th July is also ‘International Criminal Justice Day’ which aligns the national day of action with the need for accountability mechanisms within the international community.
There can be no true peace in Ukraine without the return of the children that Putin has stolen. Until those children are back with their families, no victory, no peace settlement, and no resolution can truly be considered complete. It is only when they are safely reunited that Ukraine can begin to heal.
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Source: Politics
