RUSSIAN CHILD TRAFFICKING: How Moscow grabs Ukrainian kids, takes them to Russia and makes them Russians

Olga Lopatkina paced around her basement like a trapped animal. She hadn’t heard from her six adopted children stranded in Mariupol for over a week, and she didn’t know what to do.

The family would end up getting caught up in one of the most explosive issues of the war: Russia’s open effort to take Ukrainian orphans and bring them up as Russian.

An investigation shows that Russia’s strategy is well underway. Thousands of children have been taken from basements of bombed out cities like Mariupol and from orphanages in the Russian-backed separatist territories of Donbas. They include those whose parents were killed by Russian shelling, others in institutions or with foster families.

Russia claims many of these children have no parents or guardians, or that they can’t be reached. But the report found that officials have deported Ukrainian children to Russia or Russian-held territories without consent, lied to them that they weren’t wanted by their parents, and given them Russian families and citizenship.

The investigation is the most extensive to date on the grab of Ukrainian orphans, and the first to follow the process all the way to those already growing up in Russia. It drew on dozens of interviews with parents, children and officials in Ukraine and Russia; emails and letters; Russian documents and Russian state media.

How many is hard to say. Ukrainian officials claim nearly 8000 children have been deported to Russia.

Russia hasn’t given an overall number. In March, Russian children’s rights ombudswoman Maria Lvova-Belova said 1000 children from Ukraine were in Russia. Many more have come since, including over 230 in early October.

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