In February 2022, Russia took over Iryna Grinchenko’s town in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine overnight. “We woke up and Russia was in charge,” she said.
As battles continued throughout the summer, Russian authorities told parents that their children could be evacuated to camps, where they would play in the sun and study.
“I thought, ‘My children haven’t seen the sea in long time,’” Grinchenko said.
By then it was late summer, and other parents had sent their children to these “summer camps” sponsored by Russia. “I wanted my children to have a rest [from the war] and make new friends,” Grinchenko said.
She sent her two daughters, Nastia, 12 and Ksenia, 11, on the free holiday, supervised by local teachers she knew personally. It seemed safer than keeping them at home.
A different violence
At first, Grinchenko was happy with her decision. As Ukraine fought bitterly to retake the Kharkiv region last fall, she saw her neighbors’ children hiding from bombs in bunkers, terrified. Her daughters were safe, and far from the violence.
But rights groups and Ukrainian officials say Grinchenko and her family were victims of a different kind of violence. They say more than 19,000 children have been taken from occupied or formerly occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia, usually under the guise of evacuation, to indoctrinate them, and essentially “erase” their Ukrainian identity. Fewer than 400 have since returned home.
“They force them to sing Russian songs, [the] Russian anthem, to go [to] Russian schools,” said Mykola Kuleba, who heads Save Ukraine, a group that helps parents go to Russia to individually retrieve their children. “They [the Russians] have special classes. They brainwash [the children].”
Russian officials said these accusations are baseless, and that children who have traveled from Ukraine on Russia-sponsored trips have all done so to escape war zones with consent from their parents or relevant authorities.
Rescue mission
When Grinchenko sent her daughters away, she thought they would be gone for 24 days. Some children had already returned from their Russian “holidays” on time and with happy memories.
But weeks turned into months, and then one day she woke up to find Ukraine had retaken her town. The de facto border had moved and now she was effectively in a different country than her daughters.
“Our relatives in Poland were negative, saying, ‘If you don’t get them back immediately you may not get them back,’” she said. “They were afraid the children would not be able to return to Ukraine.”
Grinchenko sought help from Save Ukraine and began the long journey to Russia for what the group calls “rescue missions” undertaken by parents or guardians. Russian authorities have not stopped parents from reclaiming their children when they arrive at facilities in person.
But these missions are tricky and sometimes dangerous, said Kuleba, adding that there are an unknown number of Ukrainian children being fostered, adopted or schooled in Russia.
At the Moscow airport, the parents, including Grinchenko, were stopped and questioned for more than 10 hours. Sometimes, Kuleba said, the children themselves do not want to return.
“[Russian authorities] tell them — all the time — bad things about Ukraine,” Kuleba said. He said the children are told, “Nobody from Ukraine needs you — your parents or your country. Forget about it. We can give you Russian citizenship and you will be happy here.”
Arrest warrants, international condemnation
In March, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian commissioner for children's rights, for “the unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children to Russia.
Then in late April, the Council of Europe published a draft resolution calling for action against the “forced transfer” of Ukrainian children to Russia, including orphans, children with disabilities, children accompanied by parents, and children taken for “holidays … from which they have never returned.”
“In the case of forcibly transferred children,” the resolution said, “the crime of genocide has reared its head and must be thoroughly investigated and prosecuted.”
Lvova-Belova said the children were rescued for humanitarian reasons and called the criminal accusations a “conspiracy.” Moscow denies abducting children, saying they have been transported away for their own safety. Lvova-Belova has vowed to continue to take children out of conflict areas.
“I can say for sure that I am not ashamed of any of my actions because this is all for children and for children's sake,” she told VICE News in early May.
For the children returning to Ukraine, the homecoming is bittersweet. Before crossing a broken bridge into their region, the Kharkiv countryside along the Russian border, Nastia and Ksenia said they had a nice time in Russia. The teachers were kind, and they often brought sweets to their classes. The children were well-dressed, clean and carrying new toys, including a large, stuffed pink unicorn.
The school in Russia taught them local history and language, said Nastia, but nothing about the war in Ukraine. When they left, the towns and cities they traveled through were intact, not littered with debris and rubble from the near-constant bombs raining down on their country.
“I didn’t expect this [much] destruction,” Nastia said quietly after seeing the aftermath of all those attacks.
