More than 400 children were taken out of the occupied Kherson region: the struggle for every child continues
The war in Ukraine is not only the destruction of cities and deadly shelling. This is also a struggle for the future of the nation, which cannot be won without the return of Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia. Hundreds of minors were illegally deported from the occupied territories, their names were changed, documents were forged, attempts were made to erase their origin and make them “new citizens” of the aggressor country. This is not just a war crime – it is an attempt to destroy the Ukrainian nation through the most vulnerable – through its children. And that is why the return of every child from the occupation is not just a humanitarian mission, it is an act of resistance, a struggle for identity, for human dignity, for Ukraine.
By the end of March 2025, it was possible to return 451 children from the temporarily occupied territory of the Kherson region to the territory controlled by Ukraine. Among them are 18 orphans and children deprived of parental care. About this reported in the Kherson regional military administration.
Myroslava Kharchenko, a lawyer at the Save Ukraine charitable foundation, said that this organization managed to take out 384 children from Kherson region, 74 children from Zaporizhzhia region, and 13 children from Mariupol.
“In general, the nature of the return of children changed very radically after 2023, when the International Criminal Court announced, in fact, the suspicion of Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova in the deportation of Ukrainian children. They understood from that moment that these were serious, significant remarks, the commission of a war crime, a crime against humanity, which entails the possibility of proving such a crime as genocide. And they began to hide their crimes regarding the deportation of children, and this can be done only by hiding the child and hindering their return.” – emphasized Kharchenko.
According to her, it is especially difficult to take a child from a residential institution, since the Russian occupation administration has a direct interest in maintaining control over Ukrainian children. In particular, because of the provided benefits for the maintenance of such children.
The lawyer emphasized that children are kidnapped not only for statistics. Their existence in the Kremlin’s plans is strategic.
“In addition, they are needed for the head of the Kremlin, so that in the future the boys fight on the side of the Russian Federation, and the girls give birth to children. He considers our Ukrainian children, unfortunately, as a tool to achieve his future imperialist goals. Well, of course, this is done in order, it is obvious to everyone, to destroy the Ukrainian nation, Ukrainian nationality, to erase Ukraine as a nation from the face of the earth. But we will not allow it.” Kharchenko noted.
Earlier, the head of the Children’s Service, Vitaliy Saifutdinov, reported that as of March 2024, about 500 children taken from the Kherson Region were wanted. These are officially documented cases of forced deportation to the occupied territory or to Russia itself.
We will remind you that Reuters reported that Russia classified data on kidnapped Ukrainian children, in particular those who were illegally taken from the Kherson region to Crimea or to the territory of the Russian Federation. 17 children from the Kherson orphanage were found on Russian adoption sites. Their names, ages and origins have been changed. Yes, the name and date of birth of one of the children were changed – they do not match the Ukrainian state registers. Another child was “rebaptized” from a Ukrainian name to a Russian equivalent. Not a word is mentioned about the Ukrainian origin of the children.
Human rights defender Pavlo Lysyansky noted that one of the main ideologues of the forced deportation of children was the vice-speaker of the Russian State Duma, Anna Kuznetsova. It was she who lobbied for this idea before Vladimir Putin, and after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president, Kuznetsova proposed a cynical solution — to create a parliamentary commission in the Russian Federation that would accuse Ukraine of crimes against children.
Thus, the return of Ukrainian children is not just about rescue. This is about restoring justice, about resistance to the colonial thinking of Russia, about protecting the national future of Ukraine. And behind each successful return are not only specific families and lawyers, but the entire state, which fights for each child as for its own freedom.
