The Other Hostage Crisis—Russia’s War Crime Against Ukraine’s Children

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM – FEBRUARY 24: People from U.S.-based nonprofit organization avaaz light candles beside teddy bear in Schuman Roundabout, the heart of the EU district on February 24, 2023 in Brussels, Belgium. Two years later, the Western media has all but forgotten them.(Photo by Thierry Monasse/Getty Images)

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The forced transfer, indoctrination, and remoulding of Ukraine’s kidnapped children by Russia into loyal enemies of their own homeland is not just a war crime—it is an assault on the idea of innocence itself. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian children have been wrenched from their families, their names changed, their memories scrubbed clean, and their love for Ukraine replaced with fear and obedience. Each stolen child is a silenced voice, a life rewritten under orders. And yet, this vast machinery of erasure grinds on with barely a murmur from the world beyond Ukraine’s borders.

However, the world has not lost its capacity to care. Just days ago, millions of television viewers rejoiced as they watched the release of 20 remaining living Israeli hostages—an achievement of determined diplomacy led by President Trump in exchange for the release of about 2,000 imprisoned Palestinians in the context of a broader peace deal. That moment of relief and thanksgiving was well deserved; the liberation of innocent lives is always a cause for celebration. It reminded us that even in a fractured world, our shared humanity can still summon the will to do what is right.

But if the safe return of those who were detained could move the world to tears, how can tens of thousands of stolen Ukrainian children largely remain invisible? The difference is not in the worth of the victims—but in the attention of the world.

According to the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL)—whose work has been cited by the U.S. government and major international bodies—there are now at least 210 facilities across Russia and occupied Ukraine that have housed deported Ukrainian children since 2022, subjecting them to programming that ranges from ideological indoctrination to militarization. HRL’s current tracking indicates that the number of affected children exceeds 35,000. It has identified Russian government management across more than half of these sites, undermining claims that this is humanitarian busing gone awry. The U.N. human rights apparatus, the EU’s research service, and independent investigations all echo the Russian pattern: indoctrination, obstruction of reunification, and a legal architecture designed to make returns hard and erasures permanent.

This is not a gray zone in international law. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the UN Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine (2023) all use almost identical wording when discussing the forcible transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia. They point out that the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the deportation or transfer of civilians—including children—from occupied territory. Doing so constitutes a grave breach and a war crime. That is why in March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and his children’s commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, for the unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children.

Plausible Genocide Argument

There is more. There is also a plausible genocide argument. Article II(e) of the Genocide Convention identifies the “forcible transfer of children of a group to another group” as a genocidal act when carried out with the intent to destroy the group in whole or in part. Whether prosecutors can prove the requisite specific intent is a high and separate bar, but the legal hook is not speculative—it is text. Many well-known commentators have concluded that the abduction of these Ukrainian children has amounted to a genocide, especially when aligned with the Russian atrocities that were revealed in places like Bucha and Irpin.

Urgency Needed For Return of Ukrainian Children

Why does this merit front-page urgency? Because the harm is twofold.

First, it is the immediate, intimate destruction of an abducted child’s world—family, language, religion, and story—under state compulsion. According to an article published in the Springer Nature Link, the impact of kidnapping on a child is profound and long-lasting. A kidnapped child often experiences intense fear, confusion, and helplessness during the abduction, which can lead to long-term psychological trauma. Common effects include post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), nightmares, separation anxiety, and mistrust of others. Emotionally, the child may struggle with guilt or self-blame, believing they did something to cause the event. Socially, reintegration can be difficult, as the child may withdraw from peers or show sudden changes in behaviour. The sense of safety and stability—crucial for healthy development—is shattered, often requiring years of therapy and support to rebuild. In short, kidnapping can deeply scar a child’s emotional world, alter their perception of safety, and affect their growth into adulthood.

As for their parents, according to a Harvard study, losing a child to kidnappers shatters a parent’s world, causing deep trauma marked by grief, guilt, and the haunting uncertainty of not knowing their child’s fate. The loss strains marriages, isolates families, and often leads to depression, anxiety, and physical illness. Not all parents can handle it. But over time, some parents seeking relief find fragile healing through faith, advocacy, or helping others — transforming their pain into purpose, though the wound never truly closes.

The important point is that one does not need to prove genocide to show that, at the very least, the mass transfer of children away from an occupied territory is a war crime. The International Criminal Court’s warrants against Putin and Lvova-Belova that have been issued based on such lesser, but still grave, war crime charges. That is because, in essence, the Russian kidnappings are an attempt to steal Ukraine’s future from Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the number of children saved so far is small. Despite high-profile mediations, returns of deported children have numbered in the low thousands. To coordinate the response, Canada and Ukraine co-launched the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children in February 2024. The coalition’s goal is simple and non-negotiable: bring them home. This is where the West’s attention, money, and diplomacy should intensify.

How Should The West Respond?

First, treat child return as a condition of any deal with Moscow. If there are to be negotiations about ceasefires, prisoner exchanges, sanctions relief, or borders, the immediate and verifiable repatriation of unlawfully transferred children must be on page one, not in the annex.

Second, expand targeted sanctions tied to the child-transfer machinery. That means naming and designating the administrators of facilities, the regional officials who process documents, the “charities” and travel networks that move children for sanctions as criminal accomplices. Sanctions should include the use of any available legal tools to make participation in these kidnapping schemes personally risky to such enablers.

Third, put teeth behind documentation and rescue. Fund the groups that actually help move families across borders to recover children, pay for DNA testing and custody adjudication, and maintain secure registries to defeat identity changes. Support Ukraine’s state platform for missing children, and help scale the teams that have already proven they can find and retrieve them.

Fourth, maintain a steady legal drumbeat. The ICC warrants matter—even if unenforced today, they restrict travel, stigmatize, and preserve a record for tomorrow’s arrests. Support complementary UN investigations and regional findings that characterize the transfers of children as war crimes and, where evidence allows, as acts falling under Article II(e) of the Genocide Convention.

None of this diminishes the horror of Israeli hostages or the imperative that was needed to free them. It recognizes a parallel truth: hostage taking is a weapon. The Nazis used it as a tactic and were tried for it at Nuremberg. Hamas used it to sow terror, extract concessions and dominate attention. Russia is also using it to sow terror and erase Ukraine’s future. But now that the Israeli hostages have finally been returned, the cause of Ukraine’s kidnapped children belongs on the front pages of every newspaper until every child is home. Western leaders should plainly say: No peace can leave Ukraine’s kidnapped children behind. We must stop Russia’s policy of kidnapping Ukrainian children!