The European Union's law enforcement agency, Europol, has reported that investigators have traced 45 Ukrainian children forcibly transferred to Russia, Belarus, or occupied Ukrainian territory during the Russia-Ukraine war. In a statement on Monday, Europol said details uncovered about the children were passed to Ukrainian authorities to support their ongoing investigations, highlighting the ongoing challenges in addressing alleged war crimes.
Information about the children was discovered using publicly available open-source intelligence (OSINT) during a two-day "hackathon" in The Hague, Netherlands, involving 40 experts from 18 countries, the International Criminal Court (ICC), and non-governmental partners. Kyiv has identified 19,546 children it claims were forcibly taken from occupied Ukrainian regions since Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022, underscoring the scale of the issue amid geopolitical tensions.
Europol stated, "Some of these children have been adopted by Russian nationals, while others are being held in re-education camps or psychiatric hospitals." The list may be far from final, as Ukrainian officials believe some children lost parents during hostilities and cannot contact relatives in Ukraine, pointing to deeper societal disruptions caused by the conflict.
Last month, a United Nations international commission of inquiry accused Moscow of committing "crimes against humanity" by forcibly deporting thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia and obstructing their return. The ICC has issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for alleged war crimes involving unlawful deportation and transfer of children, allegations denied by Moscow, which claims it has been evacuating people voluntarily from a warzone.
Russia maintains it transferred Ukrainian children from captured areas for their safety and is prepared to return them to families under conditions it deems appropriate. The issue is highly sensitive in Ukraine and remains central to every new round of negotiations for a potential peace agreement between Kyiv and Moscow, reflecting the broader friction in EU and US-led diplomatic efforts. Daria Herasymchuk, a presidential adviser on children's rights, told Al Jazeera in June 2025, "The aim is genocide of the Ukrainian people through Ukrainian children. Everybody understands that if you take children away from a nation, the nation will not exist," emphasizing the critical stakes involved.
Source: www.aljazeera.com