FT Investigation Unveils Ukrainian Children Stolen by Russia and Put Up for Adoption

A new Financial Times investigation identified and located four Ukrainian children, who were stolen by Russia and put up for adoption on the website “Усыновите.ру”.

The children were taken out of orphanages in regions occupied by the Russian army in 2022. Their ages range from 8 to 15 years old.

One child is depicted with a newly adopted Russian name and age, which differs from their official Ukrainian government documents. Another child is observed using a Russian version of their original Ukrainian name. There is no reference to the Ukrainian heritage of any of the children.

This adds up to the thousands of Russia’s war crimes, including organizing campaigns to kidnap, indoctrinate, and militarize Ukrainian children.

Seventeen additional matches found on the adoption website have been verified as Ukrainian children in a recent investigation conducted by The New York Times. All of these children come from Kherson, Ukraine.

Ukraine is working continuously to return back all deported children. At the beginning of May, the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets accused the Red Cross’s lack of reaction to Russia’s crimes of “ostrich mentality”, saying that the Russian Red Cross directly participates in the process of illegally changing the identification of Ukrainian children.