Russia claims over 700,000 Ukrainian children “taken”

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia, about 4.8 million residents of Ukraine have been deported, including more than 700,000 children.

The Russian Commissioner for Children's Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, stated this in her report, according to Ukrinform.

The commissioner said that about 1,500 students of institutions for orphans or children left without care were taken to the territory of Russia. Two hundred eighty-eight children from the Donetsk region territory were placed in Russia's foster families.

Children from the Luhansk area reportedly returned to their schools, but then 92 more kids were put with Russian families. From April to October of 2022, an additional 380 kids who were without parents in territories of the so–called Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics were forcibly adopted into Russian families.

The report emphasizes that in November 2022, an orphanage-boarding home in Oleshky, Kherson region, was located near the front line, from where 52 pupils with severe pathologies were "temporarily" transported "to a safe territory" – to the occupied Crimea.

The report also confirms that at the end of summer and fall of 2022, "due to the situation on the front line," children "from the Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv regions and other territories" were sent "to sanatoriums and recreation centers" in the occupied Crimea and Krasnodar region of the Russian Federation.

For reference:

According to the official data of the Ukrainian authorities, since February 24, 2022, 19,546 children have been deported from Ukraine to Russia.

These are only those cases that were officially recorded – when parents, guardians, or witnesses of the child's deportation reported it to the National Information Bureau of Ukraine.

So far, only 386 children have been returned to Ukraine.

On March 17, the Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for the President of the Russian Federation, Putin, and the Commissioner for Children's Rights, Lvova-Belova. They are suspected of war crimes – deportation and illegal transfer of the population, including children, from the occupied territory of Ukraine.