Thousands of Ukrainian children kidnapped by the Russian army are being forcibly relocated to Russia, making repatriation to their country of origin more difficult.
Investigative medium Verstka, relayed by Russia’s largest independent newspaper, Medusa, has tracked down some children kidnapped by Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. 14 orphans from Kherson, a city occupied from March to November 2022, would thus have been transferred to the Yolochka orphanage in Crimea, which usually specializes in children affected by multiple disabilities and diseases, from HIV to developmental delays.
However, the latter has already been dubbed a “concentration camp for children” and criticized by the Russian state press. In 2020, the official RIA news agency reported the case of a two-year-old child weighing six kilos who could not drink, eat or walk on his own. A former Yolochka employee also revealed that nurses intentionally dehydrate children to treat them better. The physical condition of these children, caused by daily abuse, may even have led to intellectual disability.
Kidnapped from the Kherson orphanage?
Verstka confirms that Ukrainian children are currently detained in the same orphanage thanks to the photos published on the Yolochka website. We can find letters to Santa Clause in these pictures of children, “clearly written in the hand of an adult, each letter mentioning that the child is from Kherson.”
The same letters sometimes mention the city of Simferopol, where the orphanage is located, as well as the name “Yolochka” itself. The photos also correspond to the interior of Yolochka, according to Werstka. The Kolochnik orphanage in Kherson reported that several of its patients under the age of five had been kidnapped: the children brought to Simferopol belong to the same age group.
Yolochka also mentions that the orphanage tries to instill “patriotism and a sense of duty” in the children while teaching them “to identify themselves as citizens of multinational Russia.”
A suspected Russian practice
It should be noted that Russia officially recognizes these kidnappings, but does not use the term. The head of the Russian occupation of Kherson, Kirill Stremoussov, had confirmed to the Russian state press that 46 orphans from Kherson had been “transferred” to Crimea. However, it is very difficult to estimate the true extent of this phenomenon.
Kyiv claims that since the invasion began, 13,899 children with verified identities have been kidnapped and deported, of which only 125 children have been returned to Ukraine, Newsweek recalled. On the Russian side, officials have confirmed that up to 690,000 Ukrainian children will be in Russia by October 2022, according to state news agency Tass.
Russia has also facilitated the adoption of Ukrainian children by Russian families, which explains the cases where underage Ukrainians have been sent to families on the other side of Russia. For example, last July, 108 orphans from Donbass, who were naturalized as Russians by this decree, were sent to different regions of Russia, according to the President of the Commission on Children’s Rights in Russia, Maria Lvova-Belova, who says “wept with happiness ” before the reunion of children with their new parents. These children, who are sometimes sent to remote regions of Ukraine such as the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in northern Siberia, will therefore be difficult to return to Ukraine even after the conflict ends.