Questionnaires of children forcibly taken from a Kherson orphanage have been found on a Russian state adoption portal, according to Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian parliament commissioner for human rights.
In his Wednesday Telegram update, Lubinets said the questionnaires were discovered by a journalistic investigation.
Lubinets said the data “completely lacks any mention of Ukraine or their true origin,” which he said is an attempt to mask the children’s identity.
“This fact is yet another confirmation of the targeted policy of erasing the Ukrainian identity of our children and an attempt to ‘legalize’ their abduction,” he wrote.
He called it a “systematic practice” since Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, which consists of “forced displacement or deportation,” then later “document changes, adoption, total re-education, and militarization.”
“While the world hesitates, Ukrainian children are growing up under the flag of the aggressor, in an atmosphere of coercion, pressure and fear…children are being deprived of their native language, memory and identity… preparing them for military service against their own motherland,” he wrote.
In late 2025, Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) had tracked trafficked Ukrainian children to at least 210 facilities across Russia and Ukraine’s occupied territories since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The HRL said the facilities range from medical facilities and religious institutions to cadet schools and military bases.
Reports also show Russia setting up military camps for teenagers in occupied Ukraine via initiatives such as the Yunarmiya – the All-Russian Military Patriotic Social Movement “Young Army” – to “instill the values of patriotism, national service, national and military history” in Russian youth.
Lubinets has appealed to Kyiv’s allies to establish the whereabouts of the Ukrainian children, serving as intermediaries for their safe return and requesting their collaborative efforts in the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children.
Lubinets said the forcible movement of children to another national group constitutes “a gross violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and has characteristics of genocide under the Rome Statute.”
Ten children from the Kherson orphanage have already been returned as part of the Bring Kids Back UA initiative, he said, adding that Ukraine has returned 2,083 children since Russia’s full-scale invasion began.