‘If Only I Didn’t Come Here...’
A Ukrainian boy abducted by Russia kills himself.
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Approximately 20,000 Ukrainian children have been forcibly taken to Russia since its 2022 military invasion, Reuters reported in June. Countless others have gone over the border in order to flee the war, only to find themselves stuck permanently in the country. These involuntary transfers are part of a wider Russian campaign to destroy Ukrainian identity — but what the Russians are really doing is destroying whole families, and the children themselves.
A couple years ago, I wrote a story for The Atlantic about this nightmare, explaining:
Some Ukrainians have voluntarily gone to Russia because it has been the only safe exit route to escape the fighting. In such situations, when it comes to the children in particular, the line between “legal transfer” and “abduction” becomes a scribble. As the Russians contort their legal system to make their transfer of children appear legitimate, what’s actually happened to many of the missing children is more complicated, and highly disturbing.
As Nathaniel Raymond, the director of Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab, put it: “They can be given caviar every day, riding horsies and having the best day ever, and it’s still a war crime.”
Horrifyingly, often when Ukrainian parents are ready to bring their children home, they’re told that the child will remain in Russia, or that there are unending “delays” for their return. Also, it’s next to impossible to keep track of all the kids — sometimes their parents become casualties of war, or they lose touch with their children as Russia shifts the kids from place to place.
I explained in my article that not only are the children kidnapped, but they are also fed into a Russian adoption system:
Once on Russian Federation soil, there is a concerted effort being made to erase the children’s identities, which includes denying them the right to fundamentals such as their own names, religion, family, liberty and security, all of which are violations of their rights under the UN convention. On top of that, the Russian government has been processing Ukrainian children en masse through dozens of facilities — many of which are known “summer camps” — for adoption by Russian families, according to the Yale Conflict Observatory. … For months, forcibly transferred children, aged 4 months to 18 years, were being listed on a public Russian adoption database that made no mention of their Ukrainian origin, eroding future efforts to trace them.
“Hiding that they are Ukrainian in the system shows that the Russians have no intention to ever give them back,” said Syniuk.
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The psychological toll on children of being ripped from their families and sent to a foreign, hostile country is unfathomable. And for one teenage boy it was all too much. He recently made the decision to take his own life rather than remain in Russia, a human rights group reported.
“They can be given caviar every day, riding horsies and having the best day ever, and it’s still a war crime.”
The Reckoning Project, which works to end impunity for human rights abuses, posted a carousel on Instagram about a boy named Oleksandr at the end of December.
Oleksandr had been forcibly taken from the Kherson region and handed over to a Russian foster family in the town of Stanytsa Astanizovska of the southwestern Krasnodar region of Russia. He’d planned to return to his mother in Ukraine, the group wrote, but his Russian family took away his Ukrainian passport.
A journalist who obtained a recording of Oleksandr quoted him as saying: “Nobody fucking needs me here. They made me understand this. I make their lives worse. I can’t, I’ll hang myself ... If I wasn’t here, nobody would have any fucking problems, if only I didn’t come here... I can’t. Fuck! It really hurts. I don’t know what to do.”
Another boy, Rostislav Lavrov, 16, who was held in Russia for a year, told NPR in February 2024: “We were told that Ukraine is not going to exist anymore, that you are not needed anywhere. You’re — nobody waits [for] you anywhere back home.”
Oleksandr’s sister Khrystyna is still in Russia, the group said. She was adopted by a family in the Temurivsky district of the Krasnodar region. Apparently, she’s currently studying at a correctional boarding school.
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The war's youngest victims. The parallels to what was done to migrant families here at our southern border is jarring. We lost track of where the children were, adopted them out, etc. Very frustrating to know there isn't much we can do anywhere.