Russia has abducted tens of thousands of Ukrainian children and placed them in camps for re-education. International arrest warrants have been issued against Putin and Russia’s child protection commissioner. Now, however, funding for the central research project on the subject is running out. There is nothing less than a suspicion that the issue is to be swept under the carpet for the sake of a “deal.”
It is an overall picture that emerges from countless fragments of information, from reports, from details that pop up here and there. The picture becomes more detailed over time, yet threatens to quickly blur when windows close.
This much is certain: Russia has abducted tens of thousands of children from Ukraine; 20,000 victims of these abductions have been identified by name and documented. It is assumed that there are at least 35,000 cases.
Now, however, the most important window into this crime is threatening to close forever. At the end of the year, funding for the Yale University Humanitarian Research Lab’s research project on Russia’s abduction of children will expire. Unless something unexpected happens, the curtain will finally fall on this project on Dec. 19, 2025. The problem with this is that the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab has what is probably the best overview and, above all, the largest database on Russia’s crimes against Ukrainian children.
Trump’s attacks had been targeting Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab since the change of government in Washington. Back in February 2025, the US government had already cut off funding for the project amid widespread protests. This was followed by bridge financing under pressure from the Senate.
Another issue was ensuring the transfer of data sets. Until recently, Yale had been working with money from private donors. In December, Nathaniel Raymond, Executive Director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale University, testified before the US Senate and the US State Department. He also appeared before the OSCE and the European Parliament to secure funding. In vain.
Hopes for donations from European countries were also not fulfilled. Today, Nathaniel Raymond says: “I testified before the Senate and the US State Department. And they asked me, where is Europe? I replied, I don’t know.”
The Rome Statute states that the “forcible transfer of children of the group to another group” constitutes genocide.
But this concerns Russia’s most serious crime against Ukraine, which has been particularly well documented in all its details. Two arrest warrants have been issued in this case – against Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin and Russia’s children’s rights commissioner Maria Lvova Belova. The legal basis for this is the Rome Statute. Article 6 of the Statute states that the “forcible transfer of children of the group to another group” constitutes genocide. And that is precisely the initial suspicion at issue here.
In any case, behind the abductions is a well-organized system that requires planning, budgetary resources and personnel: Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab has identified 210 facilities throughout Russia and the Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine where these children are being housed. These are patriotic re-education camps, paramilitary camps, boarding schools, hotels, sanatoriums. Two children were even recently identified in a camp in North Korea. These Ukrainian children are to become Russia’s cannon fodder of the future – this applies to these camps as well as to schools in occupied territory. Weapons training is already available for young children, and the inevitable war with NATO is part of the curriculum.
With the mass abductions, Russia has created facts that, according to all applicable political norms and rules, make it impossible to normalize relations with the current regime in Moscow. And yet, point 26 of the first draft of a “28-point peace plan” presented by the US stated: “All parties involved in this conflict shall receive full amnesty for their actions during the war and agree not to assert any claims or consider any complaints in the future.” Applied to Russia’s systematic abductions, this means: let’s just forget about it.
According to this logic, the issue of child abductions, and Yale in particular, are a disruptive factor on the path to a dictated peace.
When the Trump administration announced in February 2025 that it would cut funding for Yale, the university began searching for alternative sources of funding. At the time, positive signals came from Europe. But that was all, as Nathan Raymon says: “Europe had 10 months, Europe let us down.” It’s not about huge sums of money. Nathaniel Raymond says: “We are cheaper than criminal investigation authorities.”
On the international stage, however, the issue is currently booming. At the UN General Assembly in early December, 91 countries voted in favor of a resolution calling for the immediate return of all abducted children, 12 voted against and 57 abstained. The resolution was thus adopted. At the OSCE Ministerial Council in Vienna, the words directed at the opponents and abstainers of the UN resolution were again very clear: the word “shame” was often used. And there were calls to create structures within a coalition to enable this crime to be prosecuted. A coalition of states does exist. However, there is a lack of concrete steps. In the case of Yale, this simply means securing funding.
“In occupied territory Speaking Ukrainian is enough to warrant child abduction as punishment.”
“We are almost at the point where Russia is getting away with it,” says Megan Gittoes of the GLOBSEC think tank. She has studied the issue intensively, searching Russian online forums and exploring the social environment in which Ukrainian children grow up in Russia. Because this is systematic. These acts are committed “in an exceptionally systematic manner,” says Gittoes. It is well known how the Kremlin promotes the adoption of Ukrainian children; there is a register, and financial incentives are offered. “I would say that it is incredibly well organized,” says Megan Gittoes.
She adds: “This policy extends from the top of the Kremlin into Russian society.” Above all, the Kremlin has succeeded in establishing an environment in which accomplices act in the belief that they are doing something good. Russian adoptive parents often adopt a child “whom they believe needs help, when in reality these children have been torn from their parents.” The internal propaganda on this issue is enormous.
Externally, however, the mass abduction of children is a topic that Moscow does not like to address. But Russia does not deny having taken children: Moscow even speaks of 700,000 children, mostly orphans, whom it has “rescued.” This is, of course, a fictitious figure. To illustrate: at the beginning of the Russian invasion, just over 6 million people lived in Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine. According to the Russian account, around 10 percent of the population of eastern Ukraine would therefore be orphans.
In fact, Russia has taken over all state institutions for children and young people in the occupied territory and transferred the children. Incidentally, many of these children also have relatives. Many of the abduction victims are children who were separated from their parents in the course of fighting. However, Russia is making no effort whatsoever to reunite these families. On the contrary, Russia is not releasing any information.
Many children were also abducted during summer camps in the first summer of the war. And now, child abduction is a widely used punishment in occupied territory, for example against parents who show opposition to the occupation. Speaking Ukrainian is enough to warrant this.
Nathaniel Raymond says he is now trying to buy time for his team through private donations to continue the Yale research. But there is no time in this field.
Because, “the evidence is disappearing,” says Gittoes. “A lot of evidence has been collected; evidence on about 20,000 children; we have evidence on the camps.” But this is a crime whose circumstances, crime scenes and victims are constantly changing. With each passing day, it becomes more difficult to identify children.
Children are being put up for adoption equipped with new birth certificates, new names and documents, and are now only identifiable through DNA samples.
In addition, Russia is responding to the investigations by removing previously accessible data from the internet. More and more children are also being put up for adoption – equipped with new birth certificates, new names and documents, and are now only identifiable through DNA samples. And with every day that these children remain in Russia’s custody, the indoctrination sinks deeper.
At the same time, Russia is closing the last channels of access for relatives. “They say they will return the children if there are parents,” Gittoes says. Until now, this has been the only way to free individual children. Once a child had been located, a female relative, equipped with all the necessary documents and evidence, would travel directly to the respective facility to exert pressure on site and then leave with the child – a long and dangerous journey full of hours of questioning by Russian secret services. And very often in vain. Because in many cases children were moved at short notice when the authorities got wind of the plan.
Directly picking up children is virtually impossible now, Gittoes says. Recently, parents have simply been sent away and labelled as spies – indirectly threatening them with death, Gittoes says. “In one case, a mother was told where her son was, but they wouldn’t let her see him.” In another case, a mother was hooked up to a lie detector and questioned for days. Today, the issue is much more likely to be dealt with through quiet diplomacy. Qatar, for example, has arranged a number of handovers.
Western European diplomats also speak of quiet diplomacy in this matter. According to diplomatic circles, there have been at least some open warnings to European partner states not to push the issue of child abductions too hard, so as not to torpedo a “deal.”
For Ukraine, however, this is a fundamental issue. And it is less about atonement than the need for security. Kyiv has had its experiences with military or diplomatic promises. Legal accountability, i.e. the fact that such acts cannot go unpunished, is therefore the most important security guarantee for Kyiv. As Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha said in a speech at the OSCE meeting in Vienna: “Only when a criminal understands that punishment is inevitable will he stop.”
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.