The Current - Searching for Ukraine’s abducted children

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

 Ukraine says several thousand children have been forcibly deported by Russia since the start of its full scale invasion in 2022. Parents, Ukrainian authorities, and NGOs have been trying to track down these missing children because some have been given new Russian names and passports.

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People like Sasha and his grandmother, Sasha was only 11 years old when the Russians attacked. They took Sasha and his mom to what the Russians called a filtration camp. Then Sasha was taken away. They told him he didn't need his mom. He would go to Russia and have another Russian mother, a Russian passport, a Russian name. During her State of the Union address last week, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, introduced the audience to Sasha. Sasha was recently reunited with his grandmother after she traveled to Russia and then on to occupied Ukrainian territory to bring him home.

It is still not clear where his mother is. Ukraine says several thousand children have been forcibly deported by Russia since the start of its full-scale invasion in 2022. parents, Ukrainian authorities, and NGOs have been trying to track down these missing children, a task made difficult in part because some have been given new Russian names and passports. The CBC's Breyer Stewart has been looking into these cases for several years and joins us now. Breyer, hello. Hello. What do we know about why Russia has been removing some Ukrainian children from their homes?

Well, Matt, there are really a few different drivers here. for one when Russian troops invaded Ukraine, seizing large sections of four different regions, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zeparizia, and Hirsson, they came to control not only communities and villages, but also orphanages and care facilities. And children in those areas ended up being unlawfully transferred into Russia or into other areas under Russian control.

On top of that, you had children who were maybe living with family or relatives, but they got separated and they were moved on as well. Then you have children who are still with their families, but now find themselves living under Russian occupation and essentially being subjected to what experts call a large-scale re-education program. How many children have been taken out of the country that we know of? Well, there are a lot of different numbers out there.

In 2023, Ukrainian officials said more than 19,000 Ukrainian children had been forcibly deported. And on top of that, of course, you have those thousands of children who are essentially stranded now under Russian occupation. A group of researchers at the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab have identified 8,500 Ukrainian children who were relocated all around Russia to areas it controls and to Belarus. And it believes that the number of children affected could be upwards of 35,000 children, forcibly deplaced, of course, all in violation of the Geneva Convention.

And it's important to note, too, that when we're talking about children, we're also talking about those who are extremely vulnerable in care facilities, requiring around-the-clock care, and also not just technically children, people who were older than the age of 18, but completely dependent on their caregivers. And one of those young men was Anton Volkovich, and he was in the Aleschi care facility back in Harrison. He'd been living there since he was 14, and he has a very serious neurological condition and other health issues, which cause his bones to break very easily. He's now 23 years old, and he's essentially under the care of

Russian authorities and his mother, Hannah Zemisaleva, doesn't know where he is, but she got a call a few months ago from Ukrainian officials who said they heard something about her son's case. They said that Russian side said that Anton is a very bad condition and they want me as his mother come to occupy territory and to give a permission to move his. to Ukraine. It was so ridiculous, yes, because I'm not a doctor. I can't understand if he's okay or not okay. I said that I can give permission from here

and to bring him back in any condition he is now. Now, Hannah is the mother of two other children. I mean, not only is she very stressed about the prospect of traveling into occupied areas because it's very dangerous, but, you know, hearing that her son is in such a frail state, she really has no idea how she is a mother would then be able to make the decision that whether he's safe to move.

So what are the options that she has to try to get her son back? Well, right now, she's basically trying to find out any information she can about him. And she spends an awful lot of time on Russian social media, namely telegram, looking for posts or images, anything associated with children that were moved from that particular care home. And what she's doing now is she's trying to speak out about her son's case as much as possible to not only raise awareness, but it also kind of helps comfort her

and makes her feel like she's actually doing something to help him. The thing that makes me the most helpless, it is when I have no information, actually I do not know is Anton alive now. Of course, I feel guilty. I feel guilty because I think that I didn't do enough. I know one mother who made a suicide. suicide. She couldn't live. She had her son brought to Russia and she can't leave. She felt so

guilty and helpless. That's why I'm trying to do all my best for me, for my son and for my country, for another parents and for another children. What do we know is heartbreaking to hear. What do we know about how Ukraine and its allies are trying to track these children down, figure out where they are and then bring them home. Well, over the past three and a half years, Ukrainian officials say around 1,300 children have returned, many of them in small groups, after family members physically went to Russia

or to these occupied areas to retrieve them. There is a coalition of more than 40 countries involved in this issue trying to bring the children back. Canada co-chairs that coalition with Ukraine, but experts say that there really needs to be more leaders directly involved. I spoke with Miriam Lambert. She's co-founder of a Dutch nonprofit, the Emile Foundation.

And she's been directly involved in bringing some of these children back and has been with the families actually kind of at the reunifications. And she knows that the damage that can be done firsthand. The biggest weapon of this war about the children is time. Because some children were deported when they were 10 months. That means that we have an ethical problem. Even when we find them, they will not remember their own mother. And that's really heartbreaking.

And also, children are brainwashed. So they have three years, especially when they're very young. They will always believe that Ukraine, it's not the country, that their mother or their family have abandoned them, because that's what Russia is saying to them, that no one wants to take them back. So if it's only for one week, two weeks, but if it's three years, they start to believe that maybe it's true. And Lambert says what really needs to happen is that there needs to be more mediators,

countries that can negotiate with Russia and actually have some leverage. Now, some of the children that have been returned so far have come under agreements brokered with the help of Qatar. And Lambert thinks that other countries, too, that have stronger ties with Russia, like Hungary, like Slovakia, like China, should be ramping up the pressure. And she also thinks that the U.S. holds a lot of cards when it comes to Russia's President Vladimir Putin. U.S. President Donald Trump has mentioned the situation about the Ukrainian children a few times.

Lady Melania Trump wrote a letter to Putin, which was given to him at that summit in Alaska in August. But she didn't talk about the forced transfer of children. Her language was very vague, very general, talking about kind of the need to protect all innocent's children and not really talking about a violation of international law. What has Russia said about these allegations of thousands of children being abducted? Well, throughout all of this, Russia has maintained that it is protecting children. The Commissioner for Children's Rights, Maria Lavova Balova, has posted a number of videos and images over the years on social media, including Ukrainian children receiving Russia passports. Belova, along with Russia's President Putin, are wanted by the International

Criminal Court for war crimes for facilitating the unlawful deportation of these children. And during the very brief negotiations, peace negotiations that there have been so far between Russia and Ukraine. You remember those summits in Istanbul. Well, Ukrainian officials gave Moscow a list of 339 names, children that they want to see returned. Now, Ukraine says this was only a small partial list, but Russian officials have really kind of seized on this saying that these claims about thousands of children being under Russian control are fake. Officials said of those 339 names, there are about 50 adults on that list. Now, it's not clear if Anton and Zemoleva's son was on that list, but she's been working with the Emile Foundation. And Lambert says that Anton's case is really

one of the ones that stick with her the most. Her son is not a baby, but he's still her child. And she said to me and to one of my team that we need to do everything we can to return him. But she also realistic, and she knows that because he has a neurological disorder, that if something happened to him, she was at least to bury him. And when someone tells you, that, you know that you will never give up on them. So obviously, it's just a very emotional, such a difficult situation to be in thinking that, well, if I can't get my son back now, at least please bring him back so I can bury him. And Zemma Shaleva made Lambert a bracelet, so every time she looks down at her wrist,

she remembers Anton. And Lambert says that Anton is one of 39 children that were in-care facilities, that her foundation is particularly focused on. Do we know anything about what life is like for these children and those vulnerable adults who are in Russia and in Russian-controlled territory? Well, over the past few years, there's been a lot of research and reports about how Russia is trying to give these children a new cultural identity and in some cases a new physical identity. Ukrainian officials and experts speak about names being changed, passports being handed out. And that Yale humanitarian research lab, which I mentioned earlier, they tracked 314 Ukrainian children who, were put up for adoption on Russian websites.

And that research lab, which has done a lot of work in this area, has now been defended by the U.S. government. But a lot of their work has looked up at the different patriotic and military education sites that have been set up to basically re-educate these children. And not only that, but just some of these children are sent to areas where they're given military training or helping with drone manufacturing. Recently, the organization War Child UK partnered with Save Ukraine, that's a Ukrainian charity that's really focused on returning these children.

And it produced a report based on the testimonials of 200 children who were returned from Russia and Russian-controlled areas. And they were interviewed, and in new findings, they concluded that about 40% of the children reported experiencing some type of militarization and that about half said they were subjected to pro-Russian indoctrination. Have a listen to Helen Patterson, the CEO of War Child UK. Inductination might mean listening to the Russian national anthem at the beginning of their teaching lessons, Russian poetry, being dressed up in Russian clothing. And we also know they've had exposure as well to the military activities that have been taking place.

So these are really unthinkable things for children to have to go through, you know, to be shown how to throw a grenade or to hold a gun or to conduct military drills and exercises. These are very serious things. And what human rights experts say is that the biggest challenge in all of this is time. I mean, you think about young children at the beginning of the war. They've now been growing up an environment where they've been told only to speak Russian. They're learning a Russian curriculum. And that kind of sense of identity that you get, it only becomes stronger the longer you're living in that environment. And the more you think, as we heard earlier, that maybe nobody is coming to get you, that they've just forgotten about you.

We know that the Ukrainian president, Volomir Zelensky, and the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, we'll co-host an event next week during the UN General Assembly in New York about this issue, about Ukrainian children abducted by Russia. Just briefly, does Canada have any influence here, do you think? Well, yes, it does in the sense that it can kind of rally other world leaders. It can organize these conversations, you know, hosting the summit. It co-leads his coalition. But again, what experts say is really needed are the types of leaders who have a stronger

relationship with Russia and that can have more sway. And certainly Canada doesn't have that. Briar, thank you very much for this. You're welcome. The CBC's Breyer Stewart. She was in London. This has been the current podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m.

At all time zones, you can also listen online at cbc.ca. Or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.