The Kremlin says that it is taking Ukrainian children from the temporarily occupied territories for “rehabilitation”, although in fact this term, as well as similar terms such as “treatment” or “rest”, does not mean anything other than deportation.

According to the Ukrainian ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets, the Russians took about 20 thousand children. Of them, 800 were returned to Ukraine. Children are taken directly to the territory of Russia or through Crimea or Belarus, where they supposedly “rest” in camps for several weeks beforehand. This practice has been going on since 2014, but it became widely known only after the cases of illegal transportation of Ukrainian children and adolescents by Russia increased sharply in 2022.

On June 24, 2024, EU countries approved another package of sanctions against the Russian Federation. In particular, it introduced sanctions against the International Children's Center Artek, which organizes camps for children from Ukraine, including in illegally occupied territories. The restrictive measures also affected the Kadyrov Foundation, which is conducting a program of “re-education” of Ukrainian children and adolescents, and the Belarusian Republican Union of Youth, which is actively deporting Ukrainian children from illegally occupied territories. Some of their famous representatives were also blacklisted.

The First Deputy Chairman of the Kherson Regional Council, Yurii Sobolevskyi, shared how the process of deportation of Ukrainian children takes place under the pretext of “rehabilitation” at the Kherson region: “What is connected with the removal of children cannot be called evacuation or, as the occupiers call it, rehabilitation — it is deportation. These are elements of genocide, this is a completely war crime. They were able to take out a certain number of children in this way, and then prevented these children from returning to the Kherson region. Parents were also forced to leave for their children and stay in the territory of the Russian Federation”.

In Russia, Ukrainian children are placed in shelters and placed in foster families. And the second one then ends with the illegal adoption of children, which in the future makes their return to Ukraine practically impossible. Identification of Ukrainian children after adoption becomes impossible, as all the personal data of the child changes - starting with last name, first name and patronymic, date of birth, place of birth, etc.

In 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian dictator Volodymyr Putin and the so-called Russian Children's Rights Commissioner Mariia Lvova-Belova. They are suspected of war crimes - deportation and displacement of the population, including children, from the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine.