The Decibel - The Canadian-funded project mapping Ukraine’s missing children

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

More than three years on, the war between Russia and Ukraine shows no signs of slowing. Ceasefire talks have stalled. Last week, Ukraine landed one of its biggest blows against Russia, when it smuggled drones inside Russian territory and destroyed or severely damaged more than 40 Russian warplanes. Russia hit back with some of its heaviest bombardment yet.Ukraine’s demands for a ceasefire deal include returning the Ukrainian children who have allegedly been taken into Russian custody. According to the Ukrainian government, 20,000 Ukrainian children have been reported missing since the beginning of the Russian invasion.Mark MacKinnon is a senior international correspondent for The Globe. Today, he’s on the show to talk about the efforts of a Ukrainian organization, Save Ukraine. A grant from Global Affairs Canada has funded Save Ukraine’s work with Lisbon-based tech company Hala Systems to locate, track, communicate with, and ultimately bring the children home. Mark will explain how they managed to map the facilities where Russia is allegedly holding the children and what they understand about Russia’s plans for them.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

The war between Russia and Ukraine is showing no signs of slowing down. Ukraine recently landed one of its biggest blows against Russia. They smuggled drones deep inside Russian territory and destroyed or severely damaged more than 40 Russian warplanes. Russia then responded with drone and missile strikes of its own later last week, including an attack on Kiev. US efforts to broker a ceasefire have stalled and President Donald Trump compared the war to children fighting, saying it might be best to let them quote fight for a while. One of Ukraine's demands from Russia

is that they return the Ukrainian children who have allegedly been taken into Russian custody. According to the Ukrainian government, 20,000 Ukrainian children have been officially reported as missing since Russia invaded. It's a gigantic network. One of my sources compared it to the Gulag archipelago, which is famous in Soviet times,

so these labor camps across Russia, in some ways a little bit more sinister because there's kids being held in these things. That's Mark McKinnon, a foreign correspondent for The Globe. So you see this map starts with little dots and the far southwest and Crimea occupied Crimea then spreads east through the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine and then deep into Russia itself,

all the way to the Erdo Mountains and Siberia. There seems to be a network of 136 boarding schools, hotels, hospitals, and summer camps where many of these children are being kept. And this network has been mapped out for the first time. This information has been shared exclusively with the Globe and Mail. So today, Mark is on the show to explain what we know

about where these children are being held, what Russia plans to do with them, and the efforts to bring them home. I'm Maynika Ramon-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Mark, thanks so much for being here. Thank you, Maynika. So, Ukraine has said that 20,000 Ukrainian children have been officially reported as missing since the start of this phase of the war in 2022. Do we know, Mark, how did these kids end up in Russia?

So there's different routes. All of these kids were basically living on what is now the wrong side of the frontline in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Some of them were in orphanages before the war. Some were made orphans by the war. Some of them in some very particular cases, their families who lived near the frontline thought, well, this war is not going in Ukraine's favor. I'm going to send my child across the frontline to the

relative safety of a summer camp or a school on the Russian side of the frontline, where at least they won't have to listen to the air raid sirens and the bombardments every night and then never saw their children again. So we're mainly talking about kind of the eastern part of Ukraine that's under Russian control right now, then it sounds like. Yeah, the majority of these kids were living in places like Mariupol, Donetsk, that are Ukrainian cities. These are kids who are Ukrainian citizens by birth, who have been taken into Russia.

And what we've learned is they've been brought into this network of camps across occupied Ukraine and Russia itself, where they're sort of indoctrinated and made into Russian citizens. We're going to get into some of those details there. I just wanted to look at the number here, though, of children that we know are missing,

because I cited that 20,000 number. A Yale University database actually has that number closer to 35,000 children. Do we know where that discrepancy comes from? Yeah, there's really three different numbers that you can work with here. There's 20,000 kids that the Ukrainian government has received complaints or requests from their

families like these children are ours, they've been taken into Russia. That larger number of 35,000 is what Yale University has got a group called the Conflict Observer Group that was studying the specific issue of the sort of mass abduction of Ukrainian children and they tracked 35,000 Ukrainian kids who have been adopted out to Russian families. Now, the reason why you might not have 35,000 complaints gets to cases like I just mentioned, people who may feel like, wow, am I complicit? Am I the guilty party here by having sent my kid across the front line to a summer camp or an orphanage where there's no one actually sort of looking for this child?

And there's the largest number, which is what Save Ukraine is an NGO that has been working to return Ukrainian children to Ukrainian controlled territory. And they say there's 1.6 million Ukrainian children and teens who would currently be living in Ukrainian territory whose fate we just don't know about. Some of them have disappeared into these camps, some of them have been adopted out to Russian families, some of them are very likely dead. We don't get casualty numbers from the Russian Federation of the number of civilians that have been killed on their side of the front line. Wow. Okay. So three different kind of numbers there, but all representing basically children

who have been taken at some point during the war. Yeah. I think that's, you know, for me, the 1.6 million figures in many ways, the most useful way to look at this 1.6 million kids who had there not been a war would just be living ordinary lives as Ukrainian kids and Ukrainian cities going to Ukrainian schools and whose fate we just don't know very much about. Okay so as you say a few different numbers looks like some kids have been adopted into families, other kids may find themselves at different facilities that we're gonna get into here. Just in general, Mark, do we have any indication from Russia

about what their plans are for these children? Russia was very open about this program for the first year of the war because it portrays what's happening as saving these Ukrainian children, taking them away from conflict areas, and taking them away from this hostile Ukrainian nationalist them away from sort of this hostile Ukrainian nationalist government. You know, all of that is extremely exaggerated by the Russian government and Kremlin propaganda.

But they see this as a gesture of goodwill. These Russian families saving these poor Ukrainian children from the conflict area and taking them to safe places. And then the International Criminal Court leveled charges against the arrest warrants for President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova Belova. She's the Russian Children's Rights Commissioner and charged them with war crimes for this mass abduction of Ukrainian children.

And then realizing how this might look to the rest of the world, the Russian government is a little less open about this, although we're going to talk about sort of what we've learned about this network of facilities. And a lot of the starting points still come from Russian media and Russian propaganda because there's a lot of, internally, their propaganda hasn't changed. Look at what we're doing for these poor Ukrainian children and what a great effort this is. Wow. Okay, so let's get into this then, Mark. I know that you've been speaking

with people who are working to bring back Ukrainian children. There's this big project that they've done to try to map where these kids actually are. Can you tell me about this? Yes, I mentioned the NGO Save Ukraine earlier and Save Ukraine since the start of the war has been trying to get back Ukrainian children who are on the wrong side of the front line to reach out to make contact with them, say do you want to come home and if so then plugging them into a network of basically volunteers inside Russia and inside the occupied areas of Ukraine who don't believe in what's happening

or Ukrainian nationals, Ukrainian patriots and are helping these kids smuggle them through you know an amazing underground operation that you know I know a bit about but I'm not going to talk about that they sort of smuggle them back to Ukraine and to their families. I imagine you're not going to talk about it because you don't want to put this operation at risk. Absolutely. They use secret routes and everybody involved in it is at extreme risk because they are working very directly against the Russian government in Russian controlled areas.

What happened last August, September is the Canadian government gave a $2 million grant to an NGO called HALA Systems. And that's sort of an open source technology intelligence company really that's sort of in the past I first came to know them actually in the civil war in Syria where they developed an app that would track every time a Russian or Assad regime warplane took off and then send out an alert and track the trajectory of that warplane and send alert to all the civilians and first responders, groups like the White Helmets that were in the path of that warplane, obviously

giving them time to get to shelter and to prepare the rescue operations. So the Canadian government funded that effort, partially funded that effort in Syria, got in contact with them again and gave them this $2 million grant to sort of, can you help and save Ukraine? Use your technological expertise to help them find, locate, and bring kids back home. Halasystems has developed this map that they shared with us of 136 facilities in the occupied areas of Ukraine and across Russia where these kids are being held. Wow.

Okay, so Halasystems, this is actually a Lisbon-based organization, but funded by a grant from the Canadian government. Do we know how this works? Like, how are they able to actually track these children? What they do in the starting point in many of the cases is the testimonies of these kids that have been rescued by Save Ukraine. So you talk to them and say like tell us you know where you think you were being held. How long was the drive from the first place you're being held the second place and what was that and often it's a school or a summer camp or an empty hospital or a hotel.

The kids are being moved from one place to the next place. And then they, you know, once they get, well, it was a two hour drive, so it must be one of these hotels. They zoom in with satellite cameras and take pictures of the facilities. Wow, real like detective work here. It sounds like what they're doing. Yeah, it's a very, very impressive and worthy effort that they put into this. And you know, they zoom in on these things.

One of the big surprises for me then was that a lot of the kids still have mobile phones, which surprised me. And they were able to sort of track those mobile phones and the movements of these mobile phones and also some of the postings that were being made on social media and elsewhere. And also, Halisys was set up a network

of ways of intercepting radio communications around the front lines of the war. They were able to also listen in on sort of the radio communications of say truckers who are moving supplies to one of these facilities or shipping the kids from one place to another. And collectively using all of this intelligence, including they developed a bot that can sort of scan the telegram. It's a social media company that's favored in Russia and Ukraine.

You know, the track the telegram postings of say someone like Marylova Belova and everything she posts. They use that to help assemble a bigger and bigger picture of this whole network. And so it sounds like then from all of these different data points, they're kind of constructing this image of where like the facilities where these kids would be held then? Absolutely. And it got to the point, Ashley Dardanas, this Canadian lawyer who's sort of the human rights lead for HALAS systems.

And she said it's gotten to the point where they can see a new facility being built before it exists because they've been able to track sort of all these different, you know, between the satellite photographs, the social media combing, the radio intercepts, they start to see the pattern and where they're going to build a new place and what's happening to how this network is expanding. So they've really got a good idea of, at least on the macro level, where these kids are. Wow. Okay, so now that HALASystems can kind of map where these children have been taken,

what do we know about where these kids are? We've been using this term facilities, but what are these places? So I think they're really, one way to look at it is they're sort of interim holding centers and propaganda centers and indoctrination centers. And there's sort of two outcomes here. And I mentioned earlier they have access to mobile phones. That sounds a bit strange at first, but this allows the Russian government to monitor the movements and the social media postings and the communication to these kids and who they're

in contact with. And also, if you're on the internet in Russia, you're probably ingesting a lot of Kremlin propaganda. It's just another way to sort of put Russia's narrative of the war into these kids' hands and into their brains. So it actually works out in Russia's favor to have these kids keep their cell phones then. One assumes that's why they've been given to these kids, so that it's a tool for the Russia.

As much as it's been helpful to help assist them and save Ukraine, it's also clearly the Kremlin, the Russian government, the people administering this network see benefit to this. But in terms of where they go, there's 136 facilities in this network. And most of them, I think, when we look at it, they're sort of way stations on the way to being adopted out to Russian families. And that's the outcome for a large number of the kids who get taken into this network,

especially the girls and young women in that network. What we're seeing now, what we're learning about now is a new effort to take some of the teenage boys in particular and to push them into what's called the Yudnoyomia, which is the Russian Youth Army is what that translates directly into. And to put them on the track to being Russian soldiers who will end up fighting one day the Kremlin hopes

against their own country, against Ukraine. We'll be back in a minute. Okay, so Mark, let's talk more about this idea that some of these kids, especially the boys, are actually being taken to be part of Russia's youth army. What does this mean for the kids who are being taken to these places? So from this larger network of 136 camps or facilities, and again these hotels and hospitals and schools that are being used to hold kids in, HALAS systems has identified six that

were being used by this UN Army where kids were being put on sort of a military track. Young boys, some, they tracked one, some at least as young as eight, the majority sort of 15, 16, 17 who were being taken there given that you sort of morning sessions of propaganda, let's put it that way. And then afternoon sessions of combat techniques, how to clean your weapon, how to, how to shoot, how to fight. And obviously the intention from this process would be to put them on the track to join the Russian army and very likely given the propaganda they're being given to fight in Ukraine against the Ukrainian army. So effectively these Ukrainian children have been taken and are being trained to fight

against their own country then? Yes, this is one of the many war crimes you can track, or alleged war crimes you can track being committed here, taking children and training them, you know, illegal conscription, children, child soldiers being put on a track after being abducted in the first place to fight against their own country. How do we know this all though, Mark? Because we were talking kind of on a high level of how Halle Systems was able to track where these kids are, but how do we know that they're being trained

in these facilities in this way? Again, a lot of that actually comes from the Kremlin's own propaganda. They have, you know, on Russian state media, they'll show us videos of the UNARMIA and how it's being trained, the kind of training they're receiving and the kind of propaganda they're getting.

And the fact that there are these six UNARMIA bases inside Ukraine was something that was sort of proven by using satellite pictures by Halos Systems. They sort of zoomed in onto the facilities. They could see like earthworks being dug outside of the base where the kids were being held. You know, earthworks having trenches. And they would be doing sort of combat simulations. And using their movements, the mobile phones, they developed sort of a, this is Halos Systems developed, sort of a mock itinerary of what they think happens during the day there. They could see that around six o'clock,

everybody starts moving and it seems to be a breakfast. And they matched that up with testimony of kids who went through this and were rescued by Savi Kren, and said, well, we were taking the canteen at six in the morning, we had breakfast of scrambled eggs and oatmeal and then we did our propaganda sessions. And then in the afternoon, we were learning how to clean our weapons.

And then we went out to these mock trenches and for the sort of combat simulations. So again, like the intelligence regarding the overall network, it's putting together several pieces of open source evidence and putting it together to develop a composite picture of what's happening. I've seen these satellite images with these blue dots kind of moving in different formations. Is that kind of what they're seeing then and how they're tracking the different

activities they're doing? Exactly. They're, you know, the same way, you know, some of us who have, you know, share their iPhone location with family members or friends or what have you, how the system's been able to track sort of, they can see sort of several hundred blue dots in the moving in the same formations every day. And they've also been able to track this way, some of what they call the perpetrators, the Russians who are overseeing the kids and moving from one facility to the other, bringing supplies or moving the kids around.

So together, developing a picture of not what's just happening to these kids, but who's doing it. I also want to come back to you mentioned how some of these kids, though, especially the girls, are adopted out into Russian families. Is this project able to track those kids as well? Like is that part of their capability too? I mean, a lot of the information comes from being able

to zoom in on the facilities that other kids have been at or be able to follow their mobile phones. Obviously once they get passed on to a Russian family, they don't necessarily keep that mobile phone. They're going outside this network of camps that they have photographs of. Assuming they get a new mobile phone from the new family, you'd quickly lose sight of where they are, what's happened to them. That's why the Yale University database was so important.

Although the researchers at Yale University have complained they've lost access to that as the Trump administration has cut its foreign aid budget. Okay. That's an interesting point too, that the funding seems to have dried up there for some of this then. These families who are adopting Ukrainian children, do we know if they understand, I guess, what's happened? Do they know where these kids have come from?

It would be impossible not to. And again, remember the Russian narrative, the Kremlin narrative here is that these kids are being rescued. And it's seen as a heroic act inside Russia to take one of these poor Ukrainian children who is being persecuted they've falsely claimed by the Ukrainian government and more concretely taken from a war zone and to take them to a safer place somewhere inside Russia. Maria Lvova-Bilova herself has taken one of these orphans from Mariupol, the city near the in the Donbass area that was completely destroyed. She's proudly adopted one of these children herself

and shown this on television. Like here is how you can, you know, if you're worried about the poor Ukrainian children here, you can help, you know, let's all take part in this effort. And it's an effort that is, you know, openly encouraged by the Russian government and saying you had a Ukrainian child in your home would be something to be very proud of.

Mark, as you mentioned earlier, the ultimate effort here of course, is to bring children back. Kids who have been taken to Russia, bring them back to Ukraine. Do we know how successful this effort has been so far? Like, how many children has Halasystems and Save Ukraine worked together to actually bring back home? So since the start of the conflict, Save Ukraine has brought back, I think, about 700 children with the last count I saw. And the Ukrainian government, through other efforts, has brought several hundred kids back itself.

And I think together, I think, something like 1,200 children have been rescued out of this sort of 20,000 figure. Still not a huge amount, if you look at those big numbers. Still not a huge amount. And since Pellet Systems came on board with Canadian funding, 129 kids had been rescued by Save Ukraine's Count since the start of this sort of more technologically assisted effort. It's really important, they're saving, you know, you can do the math yourself, you know,

dozens of kids every month, but when you look at the size of the problem, the success rate is very, very small. Yeah. So I imagine they're still working on that front too. But I wonder, because this is such an extensive mapping project here that we've been talking about, is there anything else that this information can be used for? Well, I know that, you know, I mentioned Ashley Giordano earlier on, and she's sort of the human rights leader

and a lawyer with a background in international criminal law at Halle Systems. And I think, you know, her desire is that all of this evidence will one day be used at the International Criminal Court. As I mentioned, Mr. Putin and Ms. Lvov-Belova have both been charged in connection with this very specific crime. Ms. Jordana believes more crimes have been committed here. And part of her role inside Hallisysm, she's not the one doing most of the technological analysis. She's been brought in to sort of make sure that the evidence they collect, the evidence that they use and share with someone with a globe and mail, that it's all done in a way that preserves

the chain of custody. So all this evidence can still be used if and when there's ever a legal process. So Save Ukraine, obviously that NGO, very focused on bringing the kids home, Hallow Systems, very focused on helping that. But there's also a hope, I think amongst everybody involved in this project,

that one day all of this can be used to prove to a court that war crimes were committed here. Before I let you go here, Mark, a little bit earlier, you mentioned the effect of the U.S. pulling back their funding from some of these efforts and how that was actually going to affect things going forward. Do we know where this all goes from here, like the future of these efforts, particularly to track and bring back these children? One of the questions I had to ask HALAS Systems and Save Ukraine very early on this, you know, we spent weeks talking to them, was why are you sharing this right now? And I say there's two answers there. One of them is, you know,

to raise awareness about an ongoing, what they believe is an ongoing war crime, at a moment when the world is increasingly distracted looking at other issues and where the Russia-Ukraine war has at times tumbled from the headlines. The secondary issue would be, and less explicitly stated, is that you've got the Trump administration cutting foreign aid and anywhere I work these days, the effects of USAID effectively pulling in its support for hundreds of incredibly important programs is one of the first things I hear about. And in this case, the support for this Yale University's Conflict Observer Group, their

effort to track what happened with these Ukrainian kids who've been adopted into Russian families, and the loss of that is a huge blow for groups like Save Ukraine, just for the Ukrainian families wanting to get their kids back. And that ups the importance of the effort of something like what Halle Systems is doing. Although the Canadian funding for that was only for one year and that one year comes up in August and September. So obviously they want to show, look what the work we're doing. We need continued support. Mark, always great to talk to you. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here.

Thank you, Manika. That was Mark McKinnon, the Globe's Senior International Correspondent. That's it for today. I'm Manika Ramon-Wilms. Our producers are Madeleine White, Michal Stein, and Allie Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our Senior Producer, and Matt Frainer is our Managing Editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.