Воєнні злочиниWe spoke to three Ukrainian parents who brought their children back from Russian captivity

The deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia and the attempts to destroy their national identity by issuing them with Russian documents or illegally adopting them into Russian families fall under the definition of genocide, one of the four mass atrocity crimes as agreed during the 2005 United Nations World Summit.

On 17 March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin and Russia’s Ombudsman for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for the war crime of unlawful deportation and transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation. According to official data, 19,546 children have been forcibly transferred or deported to Russia as of 7 August 2023. Russia has said that 744,000 Ukrainian children are currently in the country.

The Village Ukraine talks to parents who have been able to bring their kids back to Ukraine from Russian captivity about Russia’s deportation efforts and Ukrainian parents’ fight for their kids.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kateryna Skopina and Ihor Dmytrykovksyi lived with their daughter Anna-Mariia in Mariupol. On 21 February 2022, Kateryna and her husband were called for duty after a combat alert was issued in Ukraine. They took their daughter to Ihor’s parents in the village of Novokrasnivka, in the Mariupol district. Ihor’s parents agreed to drive their granddaughter to Kateryna’s parents in Lviv; they said they’d stay there too, at least for as long as hostilities in Mariupol continue. “But they didn’t do as they said,'' Kateryna says.

On 12-13 July, Kateryna was one of around 1,500 Ukrainian soldiers defending the Illich Steel and Iron Works that were taken prisoner by Russia. She and other prisoners of war were first taken to the prison camp in Olenivka, in the Russian-occupied area of Donetsk Oblast, and then to Russia: Taganrog, Belgorod Oblast, Kursk Oblast, the city of Kursk. Kateryna was sent back to Ukraine in a prisoner swap eight months later. Her husband was also taken prisoner and remained in Russian captivity until April 2023.

When Kateryna was freed, she found out that her daughter never left the Russian-occupied Mariupol district. At first, Ihor’s parents let Kateryna talk to her daughter on the phone, but later [they refused to], telling Kateryna that her daughter was now Russian. “They didn’t want to give [our daughter] back to us, because we’re in the military. They manipulated and blackmailed us,” Kateryna says.

She thinks her parents-in-law might have obtained Russian documents on her daughter’s behalf, but she doesn’t know for sure. She filed a police report about her daughter’s abduction and has appealed to human rights organisations and government agencies to help her bring her kid back. On 8 May, Kateryna got a call from the Office of Ukraine’s Human Rights Commissioner; they helped locate her daughter and bring her back. Kateryna and her family now live in Kyiv; she and her husband continue to serve in the Ukrainian army. “We have to do something everyday, do something instead of succumbing to despair,” Kateryna advises parents and guardians who are trying to bring their kids back from Russian-occupied territories or from Russia.

It took Aliesia Savinska a while to find out that her daughter was in a children’s camp in Anapa, a town in Krasnodar Krai, Russia. Alesia and her family lived in Kherson in southern Ukraine before Russia’s full-time invasion. Her daughter Sofiia is 14.

The school Sofiia went to was in a different part of Kherson, far from where her parents lived, so she stayed with her grandma during the weekdays, and spent the weekends at home with her parents. In September 2022, Sofiia’s school introduced a Russian curriculum. Alesia was against Sofiia continuing to study there, but Sofiia and her grandmother decided otherwise, and Sofiia kept going to the same school.

Some time into the school year, school officials began inviting students to attend a camp in Russia. When Sofiia asked her mom if she could go, Alesia said no. “But on 14 October I got a phone call from my friend; our kids went to school together. She told me Sofiia was [...] on her way to the camp. I started calling her grandma, but she didn’t pick up. I later got a text saying that they’re at Sofiia’s grandma’s friend’s place in some village and there’s no service. They tricked me. Ten days later, my daughter texted me on Telegram, she admitted that she went to the camp. But she didn’t give me any details: which camp she was at, who she was with. She’d just write to me now and again, telling me she was alright,” Aliesia says.

In early December 2022, she left Kherson because the city was being constantly shelled by Russians after it had been liberated by Ukrainian forces. Before leaving, she filed a police report about her daughter’s abduction. Later that month, Sofiia texted Alesia that she wanted to come back and asked her to pick her up.

Volunteers from Save Ukraine helped Alesia bring her daughter back. They bought Alesia train tickets and planned a route to Russia via Poland and Belarus, but they also asked Alesia to collect another two kids who had been abducted from Crimea – their grandmother died on her way to get them from Russia. Alesia was only able to find one of the two girls; the other was likely adopted in Russia.

Alesia was interrogated for an hour and a half at the Belarusian border: her interrogators wanted to know why she was traveling. “They asked me why I was going there. I had a cover-up story, but it didn’t quite come together… They didn’t let me go until they found out the truth. By the time I got to Russia, I was more prepared. The interrogation there lasted only 20-30 minutes,” Alesia says, without going into details.

Alesia had to go to Russia’s Krasnodar Krai to find her daughter. Alesia’s mother-in-law signed the documents relinquishing custody over Sofiia, and Alesia was able to retrieve her kid. “Sofiia didn’t learn anything. She enjoyed her time there, she was with her grandma who’s always nice to her, and meanwhile, I’m the bad one… [Sofiia] doesn’t even realize how it all could’ve ended,” Alesia says with sadness.

Alina Kovalova, 16, set out from her native village of Novokairy in Kherson Oblast’s Beryslav district to the Russian city of Kovylkino, in Mordovia. Her neighbor Yevheniia convinced Alina to go there; Alina used to help Yevheniia with her kids.

Alina’s mom, Svitlana Popova, didn’t know her daughter was planning to leave Ukraine and couldn’t get in touch with her for around six months after Alina left. “This Zhenia [short for Yevheniia - ed.] has five kids, so my daughter went over to help her, to babysit her kids. Meanwhile [Zhenia] hung out with Russians. She once told my Alina that the Ukrainian [forces] will kill everyone who collaborated with Russians once they get here. I told her she was only a child… So what if the Russians gave you sweetened condensed milk or canned meat stew? This isn’t the same as collaborating. They gave those things to everyone; we had to survive the nine months of [Russian] occupation somehow. We brought [those things] home,” Svitlana says.

She explains that Yevheniia ended up convincing Alina to go to Russia. Alina took her birth certificate and left with her, without telling her mom.

“In Crimea, Alina was issued with a Russian birth certificate. In Mordovia, where they ended up, Zhenia obtained custody over her and was being paid a [government stipend]... She bought herself a house and an apartment,” Svitlana says.

She only found her former neighbor six months later, after Yevheniia created a new Facebook account. She found Alina’s profile through Yevheniia’s Facebook friends. “We started talking and I told her I’d come get her. Zhenia broke my daughter’s phone when she found out about it, to stop her from talking to me. Still, when I got there, she had all the paperwork ready: Zhenia relinquished custody over ALina and sent her to a rehabilitation center in Ruzayevka [a town in Mordovia]. By the time I got there, Alina had spent four days [at the center],” Svitlana says.

Her journey to Russia was tough: she and other women traveling to collect their kids didn’t sleep for three nights. But Svitlana didn’t have any trouble with the paperwork needed to take Alina back to Ukraine.

“[Alina] said she no longer wants to go there… I recently became a grandma to two grandchildren, in Kryvyi Rih, where we all live now,” says Svitlana, who has eight children. “[Alina] can babysit kids from her own family,” she smiles.