ECHR Calls on Russia to Respond Over Illegal Adoption of Ukrainian Children From Occupied Crimea

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has officially notified Russia of a case concerning ten Ukrainian children taken from Crimea after the illegal occupation of the peninsula in 2014.

The application, submitted by the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union (UHHRU), highlights serious human rights violations—and the Court has now requested a formal response from the Russian government.

According to UHHRU, the children were forcibly assigned Russian citizenship, placed in adoption programs, and may have been adopted. Their whereabouts remain unknown since 2014, despite repeated appeals from Ukrainian authorities.

These children, aged one to five at the time, were in state-run institutions when Russia annexed Crimea. Following the occupation, Russia declared over 4,000 Ukrainian children without parental care to be its citizens—refusing to return them to Ukraine and withholding information about them.

UHHRU believes that at least ten of these children were transferred for adoption. Their names reportedly disappeared from Russian adoption registries in 2023, deepening concerns that they may have been permanently placed with Russian families.

The ECHR sent its formal questions to Moscow on March 25. Russia is required to respond by July 31, 2025.

During the recent PACE session in Strasbourg, the Parliamentary Network on the Situation of Ukrainian Children reiterated this concern. Speaking at the session, Olha Altunina—a representative of the Commissioner for the Rights of Citizens Affected by Russian Aggression reported that 19,546 Ukrainian children have already been deported to Russia.

Meanwhile, Russian authorities claim to have “evacuated” over 700,000 children from Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion.

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