DISINFO: Russia protects children in Ukraine
SUMMARY
Russia actively promotes the reunification of children with their families in Russia, Ukraine and third countries. [Ukraine’s statements about Russia’s violation of children’s rights] is the so-called established narrative that the Ukrainian side is constantly trying to promote, while finding support from radical Europeans. In any dialogue on international platforms they receive a fairly clear position from Russia, because Ukraine has not proven or motivated the alleged deportation of children. This is all based on some secret testimony, some conclusions, even in the wording of the same International Criminal Court, with which we have no dealings. There was talk about some reasonable and secret testimony or conclusions. Therefore, there is not the slightest reason to stretch this formulation, but Ukraine tries to insert it somewhere during the dialogue time after time, because children are a painful topic, and these are attempts to simply play on the emotions of people who are not going to understand the details.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative aimed at diverting attention from Russia’s documented involvement in abducting Ukrainian children.
In June 2023, the United Nations added Russia to its list of countries that violate children's rights. According to the UN, in the first months after the invasion, Russian armed forces used widespread violence against civilians, including children. In the context of the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the UN verified 2,334 grave violations against 1,482 children, including 91 children who were victims of multiple violations. The UN verified cases of sexual violence by the Russian army against three Ukrainian girls aged between 4 and 17 years in the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions (2022).
From 24 February 2022 to 31 December 2024, the UN Human Rights Office verified the deaths of 669 children and injuries to 1,833 children, many of whom were victims of the widespread use of explosive weapons in populated areas. As of December 2024, there were approximately 737,000 internally displaced children in Ukraine.
Another 1.7 million children have become refugees, many of whom have been separated from their parents since the beginning of the war. During the period under review, at least 1,614 Russian air strikes destroyed or damaged schools. According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Education, every seventh school in Ukraine has been damaged as a result of the full-scale invasion. More than 3,500 educational institutions have suffered some kind of destruction, almost 400 have been completely destroyed (2022-2024).
On March 17, 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Russia's children's ombudsman Lvova-Belova. The ICC stated that the court has compelling evidence that Putin and Lvova-Belova are responsible for the abduction and illegal deportation of Ukrainian children from the temporarily occupied areas of Ukraine. These abductions have been documented also by the United Nations, OSCE, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Russian and international journalists, as well as by Russian official’s own admission.
Ukraine has been able to verify Russia’s deportation of 19,546 children to date, although the true figure is likely to be much higher because Russia frequently targets vulnerable children without anyone to speak for them. Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab placed the number of deported children closer to 35,000 as of March 19, 2025.
See similar cases that Ukrainian organisation abandons children forcibly taken from their families, that Ukrainian structures such as White Angel kidnap children from Donbas to accuse Russia, Child trafficking in Ukraine: few rescued, many missing or Ukrainian children are being sold on the Dark Web for sexual slavery and organ harvesting.