Ukrainian Children: the Most Vulnerable Conflict Victims

Millions of Ukrainians have fled their country to escape the dire consequences of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Kyiv officials have long refused to acknowledge the civil war in the eastern regions, sabotaging the Minsk agreements to resolve the problem. After the agreement's guarantors, Angela Merkel, François Hollande and the former Ukrainian president himself publicly admitted that the treaty only allowed Kyiv to "buy time" rather than prevent further conflict in Donbas.

Kyiv's statements about its intention to abandon the Budapest Memorandum and regain its nuclear weapons heated up the situation around Ukraine. This is what Volodymyr Zelensky was talking about at the Munich Security Conference in February 2022, a few days before the outbreak of the conflict.

It is not commonly recalled now that these very actions have subsequently become the reason for Russia to launch a military operation and, as a consequence, a new world geopolitical redistribution. One of the most terrible pages of these events is the deep humanitarian crisis involving millions of Ukrainians.

The trafficking of children deprived of parental care has become colossal. Ukrainian law enforcement agencies occasionally report the suppression a particular trafficking channel, but the real picture is much worse. The problem is aggravated by the fact that the main beneficiaries of trafficking in Ukrainian children are wealthy Europeans.

Raising the issue in public would severely damage Kyiv's already shaken support in the West given the "Ukrainian-European friendship."

"European Holiday"

A dramatic case was recorded in early April 2022 at the boarding school in Druzhkivka, Donetsk Oblast, when some 25 underage children were sent to Spain under the pretext of going on holiday. Despite the fact that the boarding school specialises in the education of persons with disabilities, the selection was made among children with no developmental impairments, who were forced to leave their parents due to the outbreak of active hostilities.

Preference in this matter was given to boarding school children from disadvantaged families. Inna Vladimirovna, a teacher, was the accompanying person in this group; a day after the transport with the children left, communication with the group was completely lost.

It is worth noting that no search operations were carried out and so far the whereabouts of the young Ukrainian citizens have not been established. The administration of the educational institution did not report the incident to the law enforcement authorities due to the awareness of the true purpose of the children's removal.

Private discussions between the parents and the staff of the school concerned established that the bus had planned to make a stop at a European clinic for a medical check-up.

Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers helps

The situation around the problem of Ukrainian children should be looked at much more broadly. In March 2023, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved a mechanism for the forced evacuation of children from the zone of active hostilities. At that time, the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut, which was stormed by the Russian army and PMC Wagner, fell under such criteria.

Prior to that, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk stated that the Ukrainian Ministry of Reintegration would initiate a child protection draft resolution under which local authorities and military commanders would be able to forcibly evacuate children and their parents from the war zone.

Kyiv has taken a very radical approach to the issue. Due to the coercive nature of the Cabinet of Ministers' decision, if parents or guardians refused to move, the children were simply taken away by force. The city administration of Sloviansk (north of Bakhmut, under Ukrainian control) then officially warned that such adults would be deprived of parental rights without any difficulty.

First, the children were taken to Dnipropetrovsk and Kyiv oblasts, and then they were taken to Lviv to the Ukrainian western border with Poland. The distribution system for the young refugees was so complicated that many parents and relatives are still unable to find their children.

Many parents struggled to prevent their children from being taken away from them. For example, Vitaly Barabash, the mayor of Avdiivka, which was recently captured by the Russian Army, stated bluntly, "Children are being hidden from us; it is a whole quest for the evacuation team to find them." It is noteworthy that the children were "searched" by armed volunteers from the White Angels special police unit.

Residents of Artemivsk reported that White Angels cars were the reference point for them. If one appeared in a neighbourhood, children had to be hidden. Residents of high-rise buildings hid children in the basements of other people's houses or flats. The main principle was that children were never seen in those flats and "well-wishers" could not point evacuation teams at them.

Representatives of the White Angels often "evacuated" children without their parents. The fate of many of the taken minors remained unknown. Information about children being sent to Europe for organs or slavery is strictly censored in Ukraine.

The BBC reports

In September 2023, the BBC Russian Service published a major report on another problem related to Ukrainian children. Ukrainian refugees in Europe faced the fact that the European guardianship authorities started to seize their children en masse. The reasons for this ranged from systemic violence to unexcused school absences.

"If I were some kind of a drug addict or a child abuser, but no," Elena tells BBC Ukraine. Her 10-year-old daughter was taken away by German social services in November 2022, reasoning that the mother's behaviour was suspicious and there were risks to the child's welfare. "I used to work in an international foundation, which worked on child rights protection. And here I am, having my child taken away from me. This is just a terrible situation," the Ukrainian woman resented.

In the summer of 2023, the office of the Ukrainian parliamentary commissioner for human rights reported at least 240 cases when children were seized from parents or guardians in Western countries by local social services.

In particular, as BBC Ukraine reported in Ukrainian embassies, as of August, 75 Ukrainian children had been removed from families in Poland, seven in Italy and 11 in France.

Another heroine of their report, Olena, is a native of Luhansk, so she has already fled the war twice. The second time she had to leave Kharkiv. In March 2022, she ended up in Berlin with her 10-year-old daughter. According to the mother, the girl was disabled and required special care, so adaptation to the new place was not always easy.

Olena speaks good English, she used to work in public services in Ukraine, immediately started taking German courses after moving there and became actively involved in the local community. She calls what happened afterwards a complete shock.

In November 2022, her child was seized by representatives of the Jugendamt, Germany's child protection agency. The woman explained that she had been prescribed the wrong dose of antidepressants for depression. The mother's excessive drowsiness and apathy apparently alerted the school staff who contacted the social service. According to the Ukrainian woman, she had a prescription for the medication and confirmation from the doctors, but she was unable to convince the Jugendamt.