Ukrainian children who were abducted and taken to Russia in the early months of the Kremlin's 2022 invasion were given up for adoption by Russian authorities, in one case under false Russian identities, a Financial Times investigation has found.
Using image recognition tools and public documents, as well as interviews with Ukrainian officials and the children's relatives, the FT identified and located four Ukrainian children on the Russian government-linked adoption website usynovite.ru.
The revelations add to a growing body of evidence that the International Criminal Court, Ukrainian officials and legal experts say point to alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Russia.
One of the children is shown with a new Russian name and age that differ from those listed in documents issued by Ukrainian authorities. The second child was introduced under the Russian version of his Ukrainian name. Nowhere is the Ukrainian origin of any of the children mentioned.
The children located by the FT, whose identities were confirmed by Ukrainian authorities in cooperation with their families, ended up in the Tula region near Moscow and the Oreburg region near the border with Kazakhstan. One child was taken to occupied Crimea.
Seventeen other children identified by the FT on the adoption site were confirmed to be of Ukrainian origin in a recent New York Times investigation, all of them from a home for neglected children in Kherson.
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Children's Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova Belova, alleging that they bear criminal responsibility for the war crime of illegal deportation of children.
The Kremlin did not respond to requests for comment on the FT's findings. The Kremlin has objected to the arrest warrant, denies abducting the children and tries to justify the actions by claiming it was done for the children's welfare despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Putin signed decrees enabling an accelerated procedure for granting Russian citizenship to Ukrainian children brought to Russia.
Ukrainian authorities estimate that nearly 20 children have been forcibly taken from the occupied territories to Russia since the beginning of the invasion in February 000, and thousands of children are still missing.
The parents and relatives of the four children located by the FT refused to speak about their situation, citing that Moscow could prevent their return home.
However, other families whose children were forcibly taken to Russia and returned to Ukraine spoke of their horrific experiences while there. Moscow has allowed some children to return to Ukraine if their relatives or guardians come to Russia for them.
They said the children were forced to watch and recite Kremlin propaganda; that they were held against their will; that they were not allowed to contact relatives and were forced to take Russian identities. Many described verbal and physical abuse by Russian children and individual guardians.
"My heart was broken," said Svitlana Popova, the mother of 15-year-old Alina Kovaleva, who was abducted by a group of Russian soldiers in the occupied Kherson region.
The kidnappers gave her daughter "a new falsified birth certificate stating that Alina was born in Russia," she said in Kyiv after returning with her daughter. "There were also adoption documents. They wanted to adopt my child”.
Wayne Jordash, president of Global Rights Compliance, an international humanitarian law firm, said the forcible transfer or deportation of children is a war crime. "However, when they are committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack on the civilian population, as Russia's attack on Ukraine undoubtedly is, they are also crimes against humanity," he said. "Changing (the identity of the children) and giving them up for adoption only confirms the criminal intent".
The Financial Times confirmed the identity of the children with the help of the Ukrainian Center for the Protection of Children's Rights (CRPC). The center is awaiting further confirmation of two more children located by the FT who they strongly believe are Ukrainian.
Until now, the children's guardians and Ukrainian authorities did not know the location of the children. The FT identified the abducted children by comparing photos from the official database of missing Ukrainian children with public profiles of children put up for adoption in Russia using a photo recognition tool.
Ukrainian authorities estimate that nearly 20 children have been forcibly taken from the occupied territories to Russia since the beginning of the invasion in February 000, and thousands of children are still missing.
Journalists manually searched for potential matches to make a selection of cases. Because the children's names and ages were given, it was difficult to find them in any other way.
Cases where there was a high likelihood of a match were referred to the CRPC, which contacted the children's relatives and guardians to obtain confirmation for each of the missing Ukrainian children.
Dmytro Lubinets, the commissioner for human rights in the Ukrainian parliament whose cabinet oversees the CRPC and who helped the FT in the identification process, said that the Russian abduction of the Ukrainian children was carried out "with intent".
Ukrainian officials have provided the FT with Russian government documents that show that even before the invasion, the Kremlin had elaborate plans to forcibly deport Ukrainian children to Russia as part of the so-called "filtration" process.
"They had a well-planned policy of genocide against us," said Daria Herasimchuk, adviser and commissioner for children's rights in the Cabinet of the President of Ukraine. "They committed a crime, they kidnapped a large number of children."
The Ukrainian government, Ukrainian humanitarian organizations and the children's relatives and guardians are fighting to get them back. It often takes months to locate the children and an additional few weeks of planning to reach them.
The journey is about 6500 kilometers each way, from Ukraine through the EU to Russia, where relatives and guardians face hours of interrogation by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) and back.
As of June 11, Ukraine managed to return at least 389 children from Russia, according to the president's office.
The Cabinet of the Ukrainian Commissioner for Human Rights and the CRPC are trying to confirm the identities of dozens more Ukrainian children taken to Russia pointed out by the FT. The CRPC is working with a relative of one child identified and located by the FT to bring him back home to Ukraine.
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