How Ukrainian children live in Russia and how Ukraine returns them

 

Fourteen-year-old Kostiantin lived in the village of Kozatske in the Kherson region with his older sisters and his father, who needed constant care due to illness. The Russian army occupied the village at the beginning of the invasion at the end of February 2022. When the boy left the house for humanitarian aid, his relatives evacuated to Nova Kahovka, also occupied, but without active hostilities.

"I returned home - and the family is gone," says Kostja in an interview with DW. "Obviously there was no room on the bus," the boy tries to understand and justify his relatives.

For the next few months, he lived alone.

"They couldn't come for me. I don't know why. I was a little upset about that," admits Kostja.

In the summer, representatives of the occupation administration offered him to go to a camp in Gelendzhik, Russia. He left and returned home after a ten-day shift. In two months, he was again offered to go to the Russian camp, now in Anapa.

"It was an evacuation", believes Kostja.

Soon, the Ukrainian army liberated part of the Kherson region, including the village where the boy lived. At the end of the shift in the camp, the children were placed in accommodation for refugees from Ukraine.

Thus, Kostya ended up among 19,500 children, according to the Ukrainian authorities, illegally deported to the Russian Federation and the occupied territories. As Darya Gerasimchuk, the Commissioner of the President of Ukraine for Children's Rights, explained to DW, this official figure includes even those children who went to the Russian Federation with their parents. After all, the Russian army created the conditions under which families were forced to take this step, emphasizes Gerasimčuk.

 

The new Russian family of the Ukrainian boy

 

While Kostja was living in a hotel for refugees in Anapa, he was visited by representatives of the Russian guardianship authorities. According to the boy, they said that they would take him to an orphanage if someone from his family did not come to pick him up. But Kostja had no contact with his family. Eventually he managed to contact his sister.

"I tell her: do something, get me out of here," the boy recalls. But the sister could not come, because she was underage.

 

Soon, the employee of the guardianship authority said that she had found adoptive parents for Kostya in the suburbs of Anapa. The boy did not want another family, but in the end he agreed to go to them.

"The family is good," says the boy, "I've never seen such happy parents."

The adoptive parents are Ukrainians from Donetsk. After the occupation in 2014, they moved to the Russian Federation and probably received Russian citizenship.

"They said they were Ukrainians. They had the flag and coat of arms of Ukraine. And the Russian coat of arms was there, because they are still in Russia," says Kostya.

He became their third adopted child. The boy went to a new school, where, according to him, he was accepted normally.

"Even though a classmate called me a fool," adds Kostja.

According to the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Dmytro Lubinets, around 400 Ukrainian deported children have already been placed with Russian families. All of them were handed over to these families for adoption, Lubinec said in an interview with DW. Only a few such cases are publicly known, and the most famous case is a girl taken from an orphanage in Kherson. Last year, journalists found out that she was adopted by the deputy of the Russian State Duma, Sergei Mironov, with his wife.

The Ukrainian non-governmental organization "Regional Center for Human Rights" has determined from open sources the whereabouts of 378 Ukrainian children deported to the Russian Federation and placed in Russian families. At the same time, human rights defenders did not find court decisions on adoption in the name of their adoptive parents.

"If there is no court decision, there was no adoption either," says the organization's expert Katerina Raševska, adding that the Russians can hide these decisions. Unlike a child taken care of, an adopted child is equal to a natural child, explains the expert.

"Parents can change a child's name, surname, patronymic, place of birth and date of birth within six months. Then we will not find such a child. Especially if he is small and if a lot of time has passed," Raševska said in an interview with DW.

 

"Resources" of foster families in the Russian Federation

 

Human rights fighters of the "Regional Center for Human Rights" determined the names of 69 adoptive parents. According to the organization, almost all families are known for adoptions and are already raising several adopted children.

"By profession, most of them are teachers," comments Raševska. "There are also military and former military personnel who participated in the Chechen wars. There are people who work in the sphere of culture and religious officials. There are also many activists and representatives of charitable foundations among the adoptive parents."

DW spoke with one of the Russian guardians - Vladimir from the Moscow region (name changed. - Ed.) His family is raising a Ukrainian boy Maksim (name changed. - Ed.), who was taken together with other orphans from occupied Donetsk to Kursk in 2014. year, two

days before the start of the Russian invasion. Representatives of the guardianship authorities addressed Vladimir's family. According to the man, the family agreed to take in the boy after learning that he had no parents, and his own sister could not take his brother and take care of him.

At first, Maksim hoped to return to his normal life at the boarding school. When the boy realized that this was impossible, he decided to stay in a foster family, says Vladimir. Maksim received Russian citizenship so that, according to the guardian, the child could receive free medical care. Back in May 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree simplifying the acquisition of Russian citizenship for Ukrainian children so that the Russians could adopt them into their families.

Vladimir claims that his family opposes Russian aggression in Ukraine. He says that at first Maksim spoke negatively about Ukraine and Ukrainians and that he wanted to return to the "DNR" after coming of age. According to him, the guardian explained to Maxim that Russia attacked Ukraine, not the other way around.

"We always emphasize the dignity of the Ukrainian nation and its right to independence. All our children know our position, and so does he," assures Vladimir.

 

Responsibility for violation of the rights of the child

 

According to Ukrainian Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets, deported children face re-education in Russian families.

"They say: "You are Russians. You use the Russian language. You forget everything that happened before and start a new life. You go to school, you get new Russian documents. They are brought up like real Russians. And you should be grateful that we saved you," says Lubinec.

He believes that law enforcement agencies should qualify the actions of Russian adoptive parents. For his part, he sees a violation of the rights of Ukrainian children placed in Russian families, especially the right to freedom of movement and the use of their native language.

"The basic rights of Ukrainian children were violated by the Russian Federation. In particular, they were also violated by the Russian families who took them either under temporary guardianship or for adoption. For me, there is no legal difference - the rights of the Ukrainian child were violated by the Russian Federation and the citizens of the Russian Federation," Lubinec is convinced.

At the same time, the Russian guardian Vladimir says that he is not afraid of the responsibility of taking the Ukrainian child under his care.

"If the international court finds that I am guilty, I am ready to bear the responsibility, but my conscience is clear, because I had no pro-war, aggressive motives. From the very beginning, what is happening there was painful. We just wanted to help the child in his difficult situation," says the man.

 

Katerina Rashevska, an expert at the "Regional Center for Human Rights", says that placing Ukrainian children in Russian families is a crime, because the UN prohibits the adoption of children by conflicting parties.

"The second part of the norms concerns upbringing - it must be carried out by a representative of the same cultural and ethnic group to which the child belongs - explains the expert. - Adoption itself will most likely qualify as genocide. Because the forced transfer of children from one national group to another is genocide".

However, she does not insist that it is the guardians' fault.

"We are starting to count those responsible from the Guardianship Council. They are implementing the policy of Lviv-Belova and Putin - to put these children up for adoption as soon as possible," says Raševska.

She also considers the Russian governors responsible, who, according to her, developed a system of encouraging families to take Ukrainian children, children's ombudsmen in the occupied territories and, ultimately, the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin and the Russian Ombudsman for Children Maria Lvova-Belova, for whom The International Criminal Court has already issued arrest warrants in the case of the deportation of Ukrainian children.

"And also - the party "United Russia" with a number of deputies, - adds Rashevska. - Especially their vice-president of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, former commissioner for children's rights Anna Kuznetsova, who initiated legal changes to simplify guardianship and adoption".

 

Return of deported children to Ukraine

 

Kostja from the Kherson region did not even spend a month with his new family in the suburbs of Anapa. The boy was contacted by his sister, who had already turned 18 at the time, and offered to return to Ukraine. Kostja initially refused, because, according to him, he was already used to foster parents.

"Then I woke up and texted her: 'Go'. And she was already on her way. Then I changed my mind again. And so several times," the boy recalls. "I hesitated because we were intimidated. I thought I would come to Ukraine – but here there is no food, nothing. And in Russia, they said, I will have everything."

As for the return, Kostja also consulted with his adoptive parents.

"They said: 'The decision is yours'. But they advised me to stay. They suggested that the whole family move to Russia," says the boy.

In the end, he decided to return to Ukraine, because he wanted to see his relatives who had moved from the Kherson region to Chernihiv.

"When I saw the Ukrainian flag and coat of arms at the border, I immediately felt that I had returned to my country," recalls Kostya.

In Kyiv, the boy was placed in a hotel run by Save Ukraine, a non-governmental organization that helps return deported Ukrainian children. Kostja spent the next few months with his family. However, neither the seriously ill father nor the sisters can take care of the boy. He accepted it with understanding and returned to the Save Ukraine hotel.

 

Recently, a new foster family was found for Kosta in Poltava. He has already moved there and, as benefactors say, he has adapted. Despite the difficult journey and the inability to live with relatives, the boy told DW that he does not regret returning to Ukraine.

According to the official data of Ukraine, of the 19,500 deported Ukrainian children, almost 390 have been returned so far. The return of the child takes place with the participation of several parties, the return scheme is not revealed for future use. Not all of them were placed in Russian families. At least three children who were returned from these families are publicly known.

Civil servants and human rights defenders involved in the return process say that it is most difficult to return from families in the Russian Federation.

"It is even more difficult with orphans who have no one. When there are parents or blood relatives in Ukraine, they can go and get the children. But when there are none, it is impossible," says Katerina Bobrovska, the lawyer of 18-year-old Bohdan Jermohin, who managed to return from Russian families. Another boy, whose return Bobrovska worked on, ran away from his foster family in the Russian Federation, he had no guardians in Ukraine who could take him.

Russian guardian Vladimir, who adopted the boy Maksim from Donetsk, condemns the deportation to the Russian Federation of Ukrainian children who have relatives in their homeland. At the same time, he calls the return of his adopted son Maxim to the territory controlled by Ukraine "a very difficult issue."

"What will happen to his psyche? He lived in a boarding school (in occupied Donetsk. - Ed.), he did not see his family," the man thinks. "They were brainwashed there that Ukraine is the enemy...".

The smooth return of Ukrainian children from Russian families will be possible only after the end of the war, which may last for years, suggests Katerina Raševska, expert of the "Regional Center for Human Rights". In this case, according to her opinion, the return of a child from a Russian family and placement in a Ukrainian orphanage in order to find a new family can be traumatic for this child.

 "And suddenly he loves that family so much that he absolutely does not want a new one?", believes Raševska. In her opinion, Ukraine should develop a system for the return of such children.

"For example, these Russian families will go either to the territory of Ukraine or to the territory of a third country. And they will be obliged to provide these children with a Ukrainian education, to raise them not as Russians, but as Ukrainians. But the children will stay with them".

 

Nikola Kuleba, head of the non-governmental organization Save Ukraine, believes that Ukraine should return all children from Russian families.

 

"Take them away from the Russian family, bring them to Ukraine and tell the truth. Because the child was fraudulently placed in this family," says Kuleba, and at the same time agrees that this issue is debatable.

"For us as a country, the fact remains that this is a Ukrainian child," reminds Ukrainian Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets.

He believes that decisions about where such a child will live should be made by his relatives or, if there are none, by the Ukrainian state authorities.

"If a person is 18 years old, it will be enough for us to hear: "Everything suits me, I consider myself a citizen of the Russian Federation and I will stay here". This is an adult's free choice. But I know that many adults will say that they want to return to Ukraine", adds Lubinec.