Kyiv has secured the return of a 14-year-old girl, the daughter of a deceased Ukrainian soldier, from Russian abduction.
Russian leadership – including President Vladimir Putin – was served an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2023 for systematically abducting Ukrainian children to Russia.
According to Bring Kids Back UA, a government initiative to recover Ukrainian children abducted to Russia, the girl, Anna, was returned within 24 hours of a Russian decision to forcibly send her to a boarding school in July.
The group said Anna is from a village in southern Ukraine now under Russian occupation. Her father joined the Ukrainian military to defend the country but died during the early months of Moscow’s 2022 invasion.
“The girl remained to live in the occupied territory with her relatives. The Russian guardianship authorities openly put pressure on the family: The girl was threatened, intimidated, and repeatedly told that she would be taken away and that she would never see her relatives again,” Bring Kids Back UA stated in a post on social media.
“As the daughter of a Ukrainian military man, she was under special supervision of the occupation authorities,” it adds.
The group said plans to secure Anna’s return – details of which remain undisclosed – had been in the works for over 10 months and were carried out within 24 hours once Russian authorities decided to send her to a boarding school.
“The process of planning Anna’s escape from the occupation lasted for more than 10 months, but it was very difficult to dare to leave,” the statement says.
“There was only one day to complete the paperwork and plan a safe route.”
Without disclosing the route used to transport Anna, the group said the girl was ultimately reunited with her paternal grandmother in Ukrainian-controlled territories.
“All along the way, Anya was afraid that she would be found, that she would not have time to leave. But everything worked out, and she finally met her grandmother on the free territory of Ukraine,” the statement reads.
Since the 2022 invasion began, Russia has been systematically abducting Ukrainian children, a practice confirmed by multiple agencies.
During a recent hack of Russian servers, Ukrainian intelligence uncovered data on thousands of Ukrainian children from occupied territories without legal guardians. As per the data, Russia had illegally appointed Russian “custodians” for them and provided addresses of their new places of residence.
In July, a bipartisan group of leading US lawmakers introduced a congressional resolution calling for the return of all abducted Ukrainian children before any peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia is finalized.
As Putin prepares to meet US President Donald Trump in Alaska on Friday for talks on Ukraine, the US is unlikely to arrest Putin despite his outstanding ICC warrant since Washington has not ratified the Rome Statute.
It is also unclear if the return of abducted Ukrainian children will be on the agenda in Friday’s summit.