Why do Russians want Ukrainian children?
As the founder and head of Save Ukraine—the largest network rescuing children from the war in Ukraine—I am often asked about the reasons and mechanisms behind the abduction of Ukrainian children. This is especially challenging for Western audiences to grasp. What is abduction? How do Russians take Ukrainian children? And, most importantly, why do they do this?
In the past ten years, Ukraine has tragically lost 50% of its child population due to the war, with children being displaced, deported, or killed as the conflict escalated. Since 2014, approximately 1.5 million Ukrainian children have been subjected to relentless Russian indoctrination and forced assimilation aimed at erasing Ukrainian identity. Children in occupied territories are compelled to adopt Russian language and symbols, with Ukrainian cultural expression suppressed, leaving their heritage and sense of self at risk.
Among the children saved by Save Ukraine are tens of thousands from combat zones. We have already returned over 500 children from Russia and occupied territories of Ukraine, and our rescue missions are ongoing. Save Ukraine specialists hear firsthand accounts of the horrific crimes committed by Russians against our children.
The exact number deported to Russia remains unknown. Children moved since 2014 have been subjected to continuous “brainwashing.” Now, some of these children are militarized and used as weapons against their fellow Ukrainians, fighting on the side of Russia.
Even a full month before the large-scale invasion in February 2022, Russia actively relocated people from occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions. According to our data, in February alone last year, Russians deported 58,422 children! And after the 2022 full-scale invasion, the scale of these relocations sharply increased.
Russians openly announced the transfer of Ukrainian children under the guise of evacuation. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for the forced relocation of Ukrainian children. Despite this, she claimed that Russia had registered 744,000 children on its territory since its full-scale invasion. Lvova-Belova also stated that she would not provide any information about these children to Ukraine. To understand Russian actions, we must recall history and past military conflicts.
How Russians Turn Ukrainian Children into Devshirme Slaves
In many ways, this war is unprecedented. Since World War II, this is Europe’s first conflict using such a vast arsenal. It is the first European war in the last 80 years with such high casualties and levels of destruction.
Ukraine has become the №1 country in recent decades by landmine coverage. This is the first war where the possibility of deported adults and children returning home is almost entirely excluded, with most forced to accept Russian citizenship, becoming legally enslaved, and restricted from returning to their homeland. It is also the first war in 80 years where the occupier builds its army from those on occupied lands.
This element of the war is the most tragic for Ukraine. Foreigners find it hard to believe that the civilian population on occupied Ukrainian territories is stripped of choice and effectively enslaved.
The international community’s misunderstanding of the true roots of these processes lies in politicians and experts analyzing current events’ use of historical experiences from the First and Second World Wars. However, there have been no similar precedents in European history for over 500 years.
This Russian policy is rooted much deeper—in the times of the Mongol Empire. From the 240-year Mongol yoke in the 13th–15th centuries, the ancestors of today’s Russians inherited significant political and mental legacies.
Today’s „Yunarmiya” is, in a sense, a replica of military units made up of captured youth. Ukrainian children are „brainwashed” and threatened to have their mouths sewn shut with “black thread” for speaking ill of the occupiers. Consequently, in just a few months, a student from a local vocational school, was brought to the point where he praised the Russian president.
In Germany, his godmother, grandmother, and older brother were awaiting for him, but he could not be returned. Eventually, when he turned 18, we managed to save him. There are hundreds of thousands of such cases.
Mongol-Tatar Slavery and Assimilation Policy
The Mongol-Tatars, and later the Golden Horde, divided people in conquered lands into three categories: those who resisted; those who paid tribute; and those who became slaves.
The first group was killed after the capture of lands. The second remained in cities and paid tribute. The third, including women, girls, and boys, became slaves of the Mongol-Tatars. Some were sold to the East.
Some worked in crafts, agriculture, or served feudal lords. After one or two generations, the children and grandchildren of captured slaves gained freedom and could join the military, conquering new territories and collecting tribute. It is quite possible that descendants of enslaved people from subjugated lands, including Kyivan Rus, killed their kin.
Ottoman Devshirme
Such situations likely occurred during the advance of the Ottoman Empire’s army into the lands of enslaved Christian children, including present-day Ukraine, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, Greece, Armenia, and Georgia.
In the 14th century, Janissaries—the backbone of the Ottoman Empire’s regular army—captured children called devshirme, who were, in effect, slaves serving in the palace or military. The best among them were selected for the Janissaries.
Captured children aged 7–8 learned Muslim traditions, and after an additional 8 years of military training, they joined the Janissaries. Christian units were used mainly in Asia, while Asian ones served in Europe. The ancient Egyptian Mamluk military was also formed on this principle: from enslaved children captured from various territories, including present-day Ukraine and Georgia.
Oedipal Question
The killing of a child’s father, unaware that he is their biological father, is an ancient story. 2,400 years ago, the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles wrote a tragedy about King Oedipus, raised by adoptive parents, who unknowingly killed his biological father.
Briefly, after his birth, the boy’s father, the Egyptian king Laius, learned of a prophecy predicting his death at the hands of his son and ordered the child to be disposed of. However, Laius’ subordinate spared the boy and gave him to a shepherd.
The child was named Oedipus and was later adopted by a Greek royal family. Oedipus learned from an oracle of the prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Attempting to avoid this fate, he fled from his adoptive family and on his journey encountered his “biological” father Laius’ chariot. Following a dispute, he killed him, unaware that Laius was his real father.
This ancient story is, in a way, happening today with our children in occupied territories, as boys who were small children in 2014 now fight on the Russian side against Ukraine.
People as a Resource
For the Ottomans and Mongols, as for the Russians, people from conquered lands were a resource. Russian authorities today, like the Janissaries, send inhabitants of Russia’s Asian part to wage war in Europe. We have seen that Buryats and Yakuts came to capture Kyiv.
Russia, like the Mongol-Tatars and Ottomans, uses the population of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (ORDLO) for military action against the Ukrainian Armed Forces. According to ORDLO officials, from 2014 to 2022, at least 6,500 conscripts died. These were citizens of Ukraine before 2014. The losses of the so-called “DNR” in 2022 amounted to 4,100 people, with data for the so-called “LNR” undisclosed.
It is known that since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, about 20,000 residents of just one city, Horlivka, have died. Among them are recent school students. Those born in 2005 in independent Ukraine, in Crimea, and now-occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, may be mobilized this year to fight against their compatriots.
Forced mobilization to war of those coerced into Russian citizenship is a modern form of Mongol and Ottoman use of captives.
Russia “Outdid” Germany
One reason foreign politicians and experts fail to understand the depth of the humanitarian crisis is that they refer to the experience of World War II. After the war, Germany released 6.795 million prisoners of war and forced labor victims, the largest group being citizens of the USSR, numbering 2.23 million. In addition, Germany became home to 1.6 million Poles, 1.2 million French, 700,000 Italians, 250,000 Czechs, over 300,000 Dutch, 300,000 Belgians, and others. The return of French, Belgian, Dutch, British, and Italian citizens to their homelands occurred fairly quickly. For example, one month after the end of the war, 97% of the 1.2 million French people in Germany had returned to France. The process of returning Soviet citizens and citizens from other socialist countries was entirely different. Western allies did not understand why former prisoners refused to return to their countries, and the forced repatriation process continued for almost two years. In other words, the issue of granting German citizenship to prisoners was not even considered.
Unlike Germany in the 1940s, in the 2010s, Russia offers citizenship as the priority legal status to Ukrainian citizens from the occupied Donbas, while the possibility of returning to their homeland is seen as an unlikely option. From 2014 to 2021, 978,000 residents of the occupied part of Donbas obtained Russian citizenship, while another 1.2 million received residency permits on Russian territory – this is 60% of the pre-war population of the occupied region.
Voluntary passport issuance to the population began in the mid-2000s when Crimean residents were given Russian passports without much scrutiny. The scale of Russian efforts to provide passports to Crimeans was highlighted by the mass opening of mobile passporting stations, even in libraries.
After the occupation of Crimea in 2014, the Russian government created mechanisms to force those without Russian citizenship to obtain it within a short time. Life on the peninsula became much more difficult without a Russian passport. To find a job, a Ukrainian citizen had to obtain a work permit from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was not always possible.
Without a Russian passport, it was impossible to sign agreements for any communal services, from energy supply to garbage disposal. The next step was the requirement for Crimean residents to inform Russian law enforcement about holding Ukrainian citizenship – those who did not renounce their Ukrainian passport faced fines exceeding $2,300 or 400 hours of community service.
A similar tactic of coercion to accept Russian citizenship is used in the occupied parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. Officially working and receiving social benefits there is only possible with a Russian passport. Even students must obtain passports, as they will not receive diplomas without “identity confirmation” through a Russian passport.
The Modern „Gates of No Return”
Russia is doing everything it can to document its control over Ukrainian citizens, with the passport serving as proof of this. With a Russian passport, a Ukrainian citizen loses all the freedoms they once had in Ukraine. They cannot refuse mobilization for war against their own people. There are cases where one brother served in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, while the other was recruited by the Wagner PMC. With a Russian passport in a police state, citizens will be forced to participate in local, parliamentary, and presidential elections, voting for those who ordered and are waging the war against Ukraine. A representative of the Russian president announced that next year, the current dictator will receive 90% of the votes. “Our presidential elections are not quite democracy; they’re a costly bureaucracy. Putin will be re-elected next year with over 90% of the vote,” stated the Kremlin’s press secretary. The vast majority of Ukrainian citizens lose the ability to leave Russia: holders of Russian passports cannot obtain Schengen visas. With Russian passports, these people cannot return to their homeland. The possibility of boys leaving is completely ruled out.
With a Russian passport, Ukrainian citizens find it challenging to preserve their dignity and sense of self-worth. They find themselves in a ghetto with no right to leave, deprived of the freedom of choice, with little control over their futures.
The scale of Russian “enslavement” is far greater than that of the Germans. According to the Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights, since early 2022, 4.8 million residents from the occupied territories have sought refuge, including 744,000 children. Developed algorithms allow the swift passportization and assimilation of Ukrainian citizens. For most of them, travel across Russian territory is a one-way trip.
In Ghana and Benin – African countries that were hubs for slave trafficking – there are “Gates of No Return.” These are port gates through which Africans, once they passed through, never returned to their homeland, losing their freedom, language, culture, faith, and everything that formed their identity. Ukraine, too, has such “Gates of No Return” – in the towns of Izvaryne, Gukovo, Herasymivka, Mozhaevka, and 8 other settlements on the Russian-Ukrainian border.
Russia’s Preemptive Strategy for Forced Relocation and Assimilation of Ukrainian Children
Russia’s systematic approach to the forced relocation and assimilation of Ukrainian children predates the full-scale invasion, as it has been actively adapting its legal framework to facilitate the granting of Russian citizenship to individuals, particularly children from occupied Ukrainian territories. This strategy involved a series of legislative changes, aimed at making it easier to forcibly relocate Ukrainian children and integrate them into Russian society.
Powers of the Russian President
Since 2002, Russia’s Citizenship Law has granted the president the authority to determine who qualifies for a simplified citizenship process. In December 2018, amendments to this law allowed the president to expand the eligibility for citizenship on humanitarian grounds, thus laying the foundation for easier integration of children from occupied Ukrainian territories.
Simplified Citizenship Process for Refugees and Ukrainian Citizens
In April 2020, further amendments simplified the citizenship process for refugees and citizens from Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Moldova. This significantly reduced the barriers for Ukrainian children and teens, enabling them to acquire Russian citizenship more easily.
Special Provisions for Children
The 2020 amendments further extended the application of simplified citizenship procedures to children, including orphans and those without parental care. Guardians or heads of Russian organizations could apply on their behalf, enabling the state to quickly assimilate Ukrainian children into Russian society.
Presidential Decree No. 330 of May 30, 2022
Putin’s decree allowed orphaned children and children without parental care from Ukraine and occupied territories to apply for Russian citizenship through a streamlined process. This effectively legalized the forced integration of Ukrainian children into Russia, a significant step in Russia’s ongoing strategy of cultural erasure.
Provision of Housing Certificates
In October 2022, the Russian government introduced housing certificates for citizens relocating from Ukraine’s Kherson region, further incentivizing their settlement and assimilation in Russia.
Mandatory Fingerprinting
The 1998 law on state fingerprinting registration applied to foreigners acquiring Russian citizenship, including children. This enabled Russia to collect biometric data on Ukrainian children, ensuring the state’s complete control over them.
These legislative changes reflect a broader, premeditated strategy by Russia to absorb the Ukrainian population, erase their cultural and national identity, and integrate them into Russian society. The abduction of Ukrainian children is a top-level state initiative, with figures like Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights, demonstrating the illegal adoption of Ukrainian children on the world stage.
To encourage the adoption of these forcibly taken children, the Russian government offers financial incentives, including a one-time maternity payment and annual assistance for adopted children, further entrenching the systemic nature of this human rights violation.
What We Can Do
What Russia is doing now is genocide against the Ukrainian people. We understand that Russians are pursuing a policy to destroy Ukrainian identity. The children returned by the Save Ukraine team have shared that Russians constantly told them about the greatness of the Russian empire, that Ukraine does not exist, teaching them to hate their homeland while promising them certificates for housing, education, and a successful future in Russia.
Ukrainian children are actively involved in various military youth organizations, such as the “Yunarmiya.” Ukrainian boys were sent to military universities. If children refused all these “privileges,” they were punished and intimidated.
The Save Ukraine team is making great efforts to bring back every deported child from the occupied territories and Russia. Our goal is to show the international community the true scale of the humanitarian catastrophe, and the actions and consequences of Russia’s policy of erasing the Ukrainian nation. Putin’s genocide is not the first in history, nor is it the first against the Ukrainian people.
But for the first time, the international community has all the tools to recognize and stop it. Now is the time to act. Act to preserve Ukrainian children for the future of their homeland.
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Mykola Kuleba
