Among the many crimes Russia is accused of committing in Ukraine, few are as shocking as the mass abduction and ideological indoctrination of Ukrainian children. Ukraine has identified around 20,000 children subjected to forced deportations since the full-scale invasion began three years ago, but officials believe the true number of victims may be far higher. These allegations are so grave that the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued a warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s arrest in March 2023 on war crimes charges.
Securing the return of Ukraine’s kidnapped children must play a part in the peace efforts recently initiated by US President Donald Trump. Speaking in February, Trump acknowledged that he was aware of the situation and said he could potentially persuade Putin to release the children as part of a negotiated settlement to end the war. “I believe I could, yes,” he told Fox News Radio host Brian Kilmeade.
Efforts to rescue the thousands of Ukrainian children held in Russia would likely receive strong public backing in the United States, including from Trump’s support base. Reverend Jason Charron, who prayed over Trump moments before his near-assassination in Pennsylvania during the 2024 election campaign, recently wrote to the US leader calling on him “to be a shield for the Ukrainian people and for the tens of thousands of Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia.”
The Kremlin’s illegal deportations have also sparked strong bipartisan condemnation in the US political arena. Less than a year ago, a resolution slamming Russia’s “illegal abductions” as a violation of the United Nations Genocide Convention was passed in the US House of Representatives by an overwhelming margin, with support coming from leading Republicans including Speaker Mike Johnson.
Meanwhile, research backed by the US Department of State has provided grim details of Russia’s deportation operations and linked them directly to Putin. According to a report by Yale’s School of Public Health released in December 2024, Russian presidential aircraft and funds were used in a program to take children from occupied Ukrainian territories, strip them of Ukrainian identity, and place them with Russian families.
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Russia stands accused of instigating a large-scale, coordinated, and systematic policy designed to remove thousands of Ukrainian children from their homes and rob them of their Ukrainian roots via a network of camps and foster homes, where they are subjected to indoctrination and in many cases assigned new Russian names. Kremlin officials have attempted to justify the deportations by claiming to be motivated by wartime safety concerns, yet their actions still constitute violations of international law. Nor has there been any attempt to explain why children are subsequently brainwashed and forced to adopt Russian identities.
The abductions are causing profound harm to the victims, their families, and wider communities. The relatively few children who have so far returned to Ukraine have provided harrowing testimonies of their experience in Russia. Many have recounted being physically and mentally abused for their Ukrainian identity, or told that their family and country had abandoned them.
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Presently, no international legal mechanism exists to facilitate the safe return of abducted Ukrainian children. However, the United States has many cards it can play in order to achieve this goal. US sanctions against Russia are not primarily linked to individual aspects of the invasion. Instead, they are focused on the illegal act of the invasion itself, which is in violation of the United Nations Charter. US negotiators can make it clear to their Kremlin counterparts that without the safe return of all abducted Ukrainian children, the Russian invasion cannot be considered over and sanctions cannot be lifted.
Sanctions could also be used to undermine the Kremlin’s ability to continue the abductions. The United States could follow the example of the British, who imposed targeted sanctions in late 2024 against individuals identified as “perpetrators of Russia’s forced deportation and brainwashing of Ukrainian children.” UK officials described the abductions as “a systematic attempt to erase Ukrainian cultural and national identity.”
By focusing on the distressing plight of the abducted Ukrainian children, Trump could generate much-needed international confidence in his peacemaking efforts. Meanwhile, given his close personal association with the mass abductions, Putin has the ability to stop this policy and order the return of Ukrainian children. With few public signs that Russia is committed to long-term peace, initiatives aimed at identifying victims and ensuring their return to Ukraine could serve as a key US demand to test this willingness.
Before sanctions are even partially lifted, the United States should insist on concrete steps from the Russian side to end the abductions and enable Ukraine to bring all the victims home. It should be made clear that this must be verified by independent monitoring mechanisms. If progress proves possible, this could serve as a first step toward addressing other grave human rights concerns such as the widespread torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilians in Russian captivity.
Kristina Hook is assistant professor of conflict management at Kennesaw State University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. Iuliia Hoban, Ph.D. is an expert on children and childhoods in peace and security studies and the implications of the Russo-Ukrainian War for vulnerable populations.
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The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.
The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.
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Image: Alla Yatsentiuk shows a picture of her 14-year-old son Danylo, who went to a Russian-organised summer camp from non-government controlled territories and was then taken to Russia, as she speaks with Reuters before travelling to take Danylo back, at a volunteer centre in Kyiv, Ukraine March 30, 2023. (REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko)