As an adoptee from Russia, I’m pained to see Vladimir Putin is exploiting Ukrainian orphans and making them pawns in an imperialistic campaign to “Russify” Ukraine. Since February 2022, Russian government affiliates have taken more than 10,000 Ukrainian children, according to the Ukrainian government. Many have been sent to Russia, while others have been sent to occupied Ukraine. These efforts are part of a Russian government scheme, which violates international law, to “re-home” Ukrainian orphans and to raise them in Russian families on Russian territory. Make no mistake: This is no humanitarian mission.
In April 2022, the Russian government expedited Russian adoptions of Ukrainian children. But many Ukrainian orphans have living relatives and many Ukrainian families maintain relationships with these children. The Associated Press reported that Russian forces have deported children to Russia or Russian-held territories without Ukrainian parents’ consent and even lied to Ukrainian children that “their [Ukrainian] parents don’t want them” anymore. Russian deportations force Ukrainian families to undertake international searches for their lost children without much hope since Russia refuses to share information about children it has allegedly abducted. “Tatyana,” a Ukrainian woman from Mariupol, learned her granddaughter had been to Russia only because she recognized her granddaughter on Russian TV. The film crew was documenting Russian families meeting their new Ukrainian children. Only about 100 of these children have been returned to Ukraine, making Tatyana’s want to reunite with her granddaughter cruelly unlikely.
Why would Russia undertake this giant rehoming effort, especially when its own adoption system is already so poor and overwhelmed?
First, we must see through Russian propaganda. To believe the Russian government cares about the welfare of Ukrainian children victimized by the war—that Russia willingly instigated—is wickedly ironic. After 2,000 Ukrainian children were deported from Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donestk regions to Russia, the United Kingdom sanctioned Russia due to its “barbaric treatment of children in Ukraine.” Much like the Ukrainian populations in territories “annexed” by Russia, these orphans have not demanded Russian “liberation,” nor for their schools to be bombed by the Russian military, for their family members to be displaced, tortured, or murdered, nor to become Russian, or abandon their homeland. A 14-year-old Ukrainian girl named Anya told the New York Times, after she was brought from Ukraine to Russia, “I didn’t want to go, but nobody asked me.”
The Russian government appears to have its own agenda to mold Ukrainian children into real Russians, and appears intent on raising a generation of Ukrainians who are not only sympathetic to Russia but also de jure Russians themselves. This practice of forced “Russification” was common across the Soviet Union and often took brutal shapes, like in Crimea. Russia’s ongoing campaign has been intensified against Ukrainian culture and society, according to Professor Sonia Mycak from Australia National University’s Centre for European Studies. The Soviet Union also commonly deported unwanted peoples from their homelands, but these peoples were unwelcome in Russia. In contrast, Russia now imports specific age groups from the society it is trying to destroy. Russia is cutting and pasting Ukrainian children into Russian society with hopes of training them to be good Russians who leave behind their Ukrainian homeland and heritage.
Russia’s demographic crisis, measured by a negative population growth rate, may provide another explanation. In recent years, the Russian government has undertaken measures, such as payments to families to encourage a higher birth rate, to steer Russian demographic projections in a less problematic direction—without much success. Importing children from Ukraine could be a very small step to help rejuvenate Russian society.
The Kremlin is also instrumentalist and opportunistic in its actions and messaging. Absorbing Ukrainian orphans into Russia is no exception. These Kremlin-orchestrated adoptions provide a dazzling PR opportunity for local administrators to display the Russian government’s care for vulnerable populations, demonstrated by TV coverage of Russian families meeting their new children. In reality, the Kremlin’s message is painful: Ukrainian children who can be “Russified” are worth saving, while other Ukrainians are worth killing.
From my own perspective as an adoptee from Russia, I see how readily the Kremlin uses orphans as bargaining chips in political games, such as retaliating against the 2012 US Magnitsky Act human rights sanctions by banning all American adoptions of Russian orphans. Ukrainian orphans are no exception. My hope is that more voices will join me criticizing the Kremlin’s deportation project which is merely a vehicle for war and politics. Let’s keep demanding to know: When can Ukrainian children go home?
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