This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: A year or so after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the city of Murmansk in Russia's Arctic northwest marked its annual regional day with a celebration for children. Alongside the sons and daughters of Russian soldiers stood children taken from the occupied Prymorskyi district of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region.
Ukraine's authorities have verified 20,651 cases of children deported or forcibly displaced to Russia and Belarus since 2022. Some estimates, including figures shared by Russian officials themselves, run as high as 744,000. As of September 2026, just 2,644 Ukrainian children have been returned.
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, and his children's commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, in March 2023 for their roles in this campaign. But the Where Are Our People? project, which I work alongside, has identified at least 47 Russian and Belarusian individuals directly involved in the deportations. These people range from regional governors to business executives.
Only some of them are under Western sanctions. My work, which I carry out with colleagues at King's College London, involves tracking the fate of deported Ukrainian children through regional government documents and the social media posts of Russian officials. Our findings suggest that child deportation is not a byproduct of war but a systematic instrument of occupation.
In the short term, the deportation of children means control over families in occupied Ukraine. Children are removed from occupied areas under the banner of "rehabilitation" or "health vacations" to escape active conflict. They are then placed thousands of miles away in Siberia, the Arctic or the Far East.
Their personal data is concealed and some children are placed with Russian families. For parents left behind in occupied cities such as Melitopol or Mariupol, preserving the possibility of getting their children back means complying with the Russian authorities on their terms. Russia's longer game is to ensure the next generation of Ukrainians from the occupied territories do not think of themselves as Ukrainian at all.
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