section_path: War crimes and attacks on civilians/Abduction of Ukrainian children
section_name: Abduction of Ukrainian children
paragraph_text: Abduction of Ukrainian children
  
  In June 2024, an investigation by the Financial Times identified four Ukrainian children on a Russian government-linked adoption website that had been abducted from state care homes. The children's Ukrainian background was not mentioned. One child was shown with a new Russian name and age that differed from their Ukrainian documents, another was shown using a Russian version of their Ukrainian name. 17 other matches identified by the Financial Times on the adoption website were also confirmed as Ukrainian children in a recent New York Times investigation. Ukrainian authorities estimate that nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children have been forcibly taken from occupied territories to Russia since the full-scale invasion began. Wayne Jordash, president of humanitarian law firm Global Rights Compliance, described forcibly transferring or deporting children as war crimes, adding that when done as part of a widespread or systematic attack on a civilian population, Russia is also committing crimes against humanity.
  
  In March 2025, the ISW said that by the time the invasion started, Russia had already laid the groundwork for massive deportation of Ukrainian children, with Putin recognizing depriving Ukraine of its multigenerational potential a way to dominate the Ukrainian people. ISW cited Kremlin documents uncovered by Ukrainian human rights activists dated 18 February 2022, describing plans to move Ukrainian children from orphanages in occupied Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts to Russia under ″humanitarian evacuations″, particularly planning to target vulnerable children without parental care. In the years following the invasion, Russia has embarked on a deeply institutionalized project to abduct and forcibly give Ukrainian children a Russian identity. International law explicitly forbids this kind of forcible transfer of children, and constituent moving children for the purpose of damaging a national or ethnic group as an act of genocide.