Imagine that your child has been kidnapped and taken far away. That child is scared, and you can offer no comfort. You don’t know if your child is being tortured, abused or militarized, but you know that someone is trying to turn your child into someone else entirely. It’s a parent’s worst nightmare.

Imagine that trauma and then scale it up thousands of times, and you have the reality that Ukraine is living with today. 

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, tens of thousands of Ukrainian children have been kidnapped from their families and communities, taken to Russia and Russian-held territories and forced into indoctrination camps, military training camps, the Russian adoption system and who knows where else. Some have been tortured and sexually abused, while some have been forced to fight against Ukraine as child soldiers. At least two of these children, a 12-year-old girl named Misha and 16-year-old named Liza, ended up in a camp in North Korea.

These children are fed pro-Russian propaganda and forced to speak in Russian in a deliberate effort to deny their national identity. Their documents, histories and citizenship are being erased to wholly sever their ties to their families and nation. They are told lies about who they are and where they come from. 

The facts are well documented, thanks to the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL), which uses satellite imagery and open-source intelligence methods to track these crimes.

Some children were taken after their parents were killed in Russian strikes or by........

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