The NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), which specializes in monitoring the international humanitarian situation, warned of “destructive” consequences of the war in Ukraine for the child population, especially for children who were trained in government institutions Ukrainian in the territories that were captured by Russia during the invasion, followed by forced deportation of minors to the territory of Russia.

According to Ukrainian government data compiled by NGOs, there were approximately 105 thousand children in boarding schools in Ukraine, almost half of them are disabled, according to the UN. After the invasion, a hundred such institutions, which held about 32,000 minors, were under full or partial control of Russia.

Thus, “Ukrainian activists and lawyers indicate that at least several thousand of these children were forcibly deported to Russia or to other territories which it occupies.”

Recall that in May 2022, the Russian Parliament amended the laws allowing authorities grant Russian citizenship to Ukrainian children, facilitating their guardianship and adoption by Russian families in Russia. Russian officials themselves admit that hundreds of Ukrainian children were “accepted” since the beginning of the war.

Then and in a joint statement, Human Rights Watch and 42 other organizations condemned these “forced transfers and adoptions and asked Russia to allow UN and other agency officials access to identify these children, guarantee their well-being, and facilitate their return to Ukraine.”

educational deficit

The situation of children interned in Ukraine it was bad enough before the war, as the Ukrainian government itself acknowledged.