Kidnapping for financial gain: thousands of Ukrainian children taken to Russia

The Guardian reports that the Ukrainian girl Alina, Svitlana Popova's 15-year-old daughter, was terrified by the stories recounted to her while she lived under Russian control in the Kherson region. Yevhenia, Alina's best friend's pro-Russian mother, stated that the girl and her family had received food aid from the Russian-imposed regime. She claimed that when Ukrainian forces arrived in Kherson, they would harm everyone who had ties with the Russians. 

Alina informed the publication that she considered Yevhenia to be a friend. The terrified youngster consented when the woman advised traveling to Russia for 'safety'. 

It turned out that Yevhenia saw caring for Alina as a method to obtain money and a better apartment from Russian social services. She got abusive once she crossed the border.

Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year, thousands of children have been abducted and taken to Russia. Alina is one among the fortunate few hundred who have been returned after her mother traveled the perilous and roundabout trek to Russia to plead her cause before the country's social services, with the assistance of volunteers.

According to the Ukrainian authorities, 16,226 children were deported to Russia, of which 10,513 were found and more than 300 were returned. Some fear that the number of missing may be underestimated.

Unaccompanied minors, some of whose parents were killed during the siege of Mariupol, have vanished into a Kremlin-approved system that is now being investigated by the International Criminal Court.

The Popova family's experience sheds light on another aspect of the relocation of Ukrainian children to Russia: how acquaintances and sometimes relatives kidnapped children, sometimes for mercenary motives.

“This woman lied to Alina. She told her: ‘Because you talked to Russian soldiers during the occupation and took food and water after the liberation, the Ukrainian soldiers will torture and kill you. We need to escape because we are in danger.’ I told Alina it was all a lie, but she believed it and stole her birth certificate and went with her last October [a few weeks before the city of Kherson was liberated],” the publication reports with reference to Svitlana. 

Using social media to locate her daughter, she discovered that Alina had been transferred to a hamlet 1,500 kilometers within Russia.

Alina was crying when Svitlana called her on Viber. When Yevhenia learned about the interaction, she confiscated Alina's phone.

“I was so scared. Yvhenia was so friendly when I was in Ukraine but she tricked me. When she knew I was talking to my mother she became angry and hit me. She was obsessed with money and what she could get from the authorities for looking after me,” the girl said. 

Svitlana had just one choice to get her kid back: fly to Russia through Poland and Belarus to appeal to social services in a hostile country.

When she arrived in the area where her daughter had been stolen, she made an official declaration that Alina was her daughter, only to learn that the lady who had abducted her had moved the girl to a 'rehabilitation center' 80 kilometers away in an attempt to hide her while she arranged adoption paperwork.

“It sounds strange, but the authorities were on my side. They were angry she had taken Alina to Russian territory. But they also said that if I had come four days later the woman would have organized a Russian ID for Alina. Then she would have been Russian and there was nothing they could do,” Svitlana noted. 

Alina and Svitlana represent a tiny fraction of separated families whose children have been able to return to Ukraine. Most families of kidnapped children are reluctant to discuss the matter for fear of complicating efforts to recover them. In one particularly infamous example, a group of abducted Ukrainian youngsters from Mariupol were exhibited at a protest in Moscow in February.

“We’re not sure how many children are involved,” Mykola Kuleba, a former children's ombudsman who now oversees the Save Ukraine rescue network, which has been assisting parents like Svitlana, said. 

“It’s not only unaccompanied children who have been sent to camps in Russia, and kids kidnapped from boarding schools and orphanages. We’re not sure how many we are talking about. In some cases we are talking about children who were in occupied areas while the rest of their family stayed in Ukrainian-controlled areas, and those families have lost connection with their children. Now they are afraid they will never see them again. Then we need to talk about the children who are now in Russia who we know nothing about. Children whose parents have been imprisoned after being separated at the filtration camps or whose parents have been killed, in particular during the siege of Mariupol. We are most concerned for those children who have been missing for six months and more where Russian authorities have prepared birth certificates and passports and sent them to foster families,” he emphasized. 

Kuleba stated that, similar to Alina, he had heard of other Ukrainian children being stolen for financial gain.

“One boy we rescued from a Russian school said he had been with another boy from Mariupol who had been placed with a very poor family of alcoholics. He was ignored and hungry every day. To me that suggests they fostered him for money to buy alcohol.”

Despite his group's success in repatriating Ukrainian children, Kuleba had observed a change for the worse in Russian authorities' attitudes.

“They understand each of these cases is a war crime and they are increasingly trying to block returns. They are making it harder and harder. And time works against these children. Some come from very vulnerable backgrounds and what we are recognising is that it is easy to influence them, more so after six months. We had the case of a boy who after two weeks with a foster family didn’t want to be returned. He had been persuaded that Ukrainians would hurt him.”