Alya: You say that Russia’s forcible transfer of Ukrainian children is the crime of genocide. In international law, genocide is defined by Article 6 of the Rome Statute. What would it take to change this legal framework to include the deportation and militarization of Ukrainian children? And is the Office of the Prosecutor in any position to do that work under current US sanctions and Karim Khan’s leave?

Kateryna: We don’t need to change any legal frameworks to prosecute what the Russians are doing with Ukrainian children. Militarization and political indoctrination, as well as Russification of young Ukrainians, is a part of Russia’s bigger strategy to destroy Ukraine as a sovereign state and to subjugate everything in the Ukrainian nation to the Russian influence and control. I don’t see legal problems; we simply still lack the political will to call the crimes by their proper names.

The UN’s 1948 Genocide Convention posits that all states that signed the convention, 154 as of today, should act to stop it—not only those affected by genocide. If the international community recognized what the Russians are doing as a crime of genocide, it would mean that yet another time in history the international community was not able to prevent genocide, to recognize some early warnings, to react properly to what the Russians did, for example, in occupied Crimea or Donbas before 2022. It is not easy, and the international community and world political leaders should be mature enough to face all these challenges, recognize that they were involved in the commission of these crimes through silence and inaction, and finally stop it.

So that is why, according to the Rome Statute, the Office of the Prosecutor can start an investigation of the crime of genocide in the Ukrainian context. It is possible: the ICC’s Ukraine-situation investigation in March 2022, supported by 43 states, included not only war crimes and crimes against humanity, but also the crime of genocide. So we have all the legal tools and means, but politically it is very difficult.

Recently, there has been a global shift towards this—in the context of the war between Arabian states and Israel, not Ukraine. But for example, Israel’s attacks against Gaza’s education have already been termed "scholasticide," so as a part of the genocidal intent, as a part of the crime of genocide. So for us lawyers and human rights defenders, this is the task—to push the international community to do the same with Russia. It is not easy because Russia is one of the five "world policemen" expected to maintain this international legal order.

I believe that, perhaps in decades, but we will see how Russia’s actions will be recognized as the crime of genocide. The forcible transfer of children from one group to another group is the fifth universally recognized element of the crime of genocide.

Alya: Your organization was involved in documenting this. How does this pipeline actually work?

Kateryna: Yes, let's take Olga Druzhinina, who fostered four children from the occupied territories of Ukraine. Her story is very interesting: first, it seemed that she could be just an ordinary Russian brainwashed by TV shows about children from Donbas. But then we found that Olga is very close to [former Russian President] Medvedev, and through Medvedev to President Putin. Olga is the head of one non-governmental organization, "Semia Arktiki" [Family of the Arctic], and this organization aims to find foster parents for orphans— now including orphans from occupied territories of Ukraine. The co-head of this organization also fostered Ukrainian children.

It is a very well-built, pre-planned architecture of people involved in the commission of this crime—not some sporadic reaction to the full-scale invasion. They planned to do it. And I will not be surprised if, in the future, we find that these families also adopted children from Crimea or from Donbas even before 2022.

Her husband is a veteran of the Russian Armed Forces. He participated in many wars of the Russian regime, including the wars in Chechnya. It was clearly against the child's best interest to be sent to the family of this Russian serviceman and his wife. So their case was widely publicized. We recorded many different details. Later, we found photos of these children in the "Warrior Center" camp in Novosibirsk, and her foster daughter from occupied Ukraine wearing a St.George’s [Russian imperial] ribbon and in military uniform.

So the Ukrainian identity of these children was completely eradicated. It was prohibited to mention that they were Ukrainians, and the main goal of this family was to repress their unloyalty to the Russian state, to re-educate them, mold them into Russian patriots. Unfortunately, I don’t know the fate of these teenagers from Mariupol, but as far as I know, they were not returned to Ukraine. And now they are already young adults—meaning they will soon be conscripted into the Russian army. They have this military duty because they were forcibly given Russian citizenship. And young children also remain under the control of Olga and his husband.

Olga and her husband are members of the so-called "Putin Team." They were recognized many times as the best family of the Yamalo-Nenets region. The governor of Yamal-Nenets is also Putin's person. His candidacy was supported by Putin for re-election to this position. And this governor has many times mentioned that Ukrainian children from the occupied territories of Ukraine were accepted by foster families from his region, even without the proper documents.

It is very difficult to influence their behavior without sanctions. In this sphere of foster care, the balance between placing children in Russian institutions and Russian families is hard to find. Russia presents only two options for the forcibly transferred Ukrainian children: Russian boarding institutions or Russian foster families. And of course, ordinary people think: a family is better than a boarding institution. The truth is that there is a third option: just return these children to Ukraine, to their homes.

And I would like to highlight that, according to the order of Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, these children from institutions will not be returned to boarding institutions in Ukraine. They will inevitably be placed with a foster family, and they can participate in choosing this family or changing it. Ukraine is doing its best to guarantee that its actions comply with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, but unfortunately, Russians are very hard to persuade to return these orphanage children.

Alya: On 11 May 2026, the EU Council sanctioned 16 individuals and seven entities for the systematic unlawful deportation, forced transfer, and forced assimilation of Ukrainian children, including through indoctrination and militarized education. Your organization pushed for these sanctions. Are they working?

Kateryna: In January–February 2026, we criticized the European Union’s sanctions policy. New persons were being added to lists, but we found that the level of coordination and harmonization of sanctions policies was only 5%. Only 13 individuals and three organizations were under sanctions in all jurisdictions analyzed by us: Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, the European Union, Switzerland, and Japan. It was terrifying because sanctions exist, yet they are riddled by many loopholes and are actually inefficient.

That is why we started persuading them to do something with this system. And on 11 May, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the European Union synchronized their sanctions packages: the people are included in all jurisdictions. For us, this is a big achievement.

Another achievement: a shift in their perception of where this vertical of guilty persons ends. Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova—okay; ministers, children's rights ombudspersons at the regional level, heads of the occupation authorities—okay. But what about the "ordinary" Russian people who fostered poor Ukrainian children and now contribute to their militarization? The 11 May sanctions saw the United Kingdom and Canada listing ordinary Russians, like the family from Yamalo-Nenets that fostered four Ukrainian children, including teenagers from Mariupol, and then sent them to re-education camps of the "Center Warrior" to be militarized as Russian soldiers.

If these results of our work seem small, we must remember that for the Russians, it is a very sensitive issue. They are mad because of the sanctions—and this was visible when the “Yolochka” boarding institution in occupied Crimea’s Simferopol, called a “concentration camp” by ordinary Russians, was sanctioned. Already in December 2014 [after Russia’s occupation of east Ukraine], the first Ukrainian orphans were sent to Russian foster families from this “Yolochka.” 12 years later, children from Kherson boarding institutions also went through “Yolochka.”

Alya: You've documented over 20,500 deported children. How many of that cohort are approaching Russian conscription age?

Kateryna: It is hard to tell because the way the Ukrainian side is collecting statistics is not good enough. So you should address this question to the competent bodies of Ukraine.

But according to our calculations, just to describe the situation in general: all Ukrainian teenagers under Russian control start receiving draft notices at the age of 16. According to the Russian legislation, it should be at the age of 17, but they're so afraid that these children will escape or will return to Ukrainian-controlled territories, that they start this process in violation of their own legislation.

Everything is organized around schools. They’re not about education under occupation, but have become additional buildings of the military commissariat. Specific teachers are responsible for this conscription process. Boys aged 16-17 are being brought to the military commissariat in organized groups. You cannot escape, you cannot refuse, because you will hear “knock-knock” on your door: the occupation authorities and your teacher will ask: “Where are you? You should go.”

Another problem: Russia and Belarus started exchanging data, meaning that if this child receives a draft notice at the age of 18, he will not be able to cross the border—which matters because the checkpoint of Mokrany-Domanove between Belarus and Ukraine is the main point of returning Ukrainian children from Russian control. Every year, the Russians amend their legislation to impose more obstacles to the repatriation process.

So the only way for a Ukrainian teenage boy to escape is to do this several days before a "povestka" [draft notice] comes to his house at 16 years.

According to our intelligence, since 2014, 48,000 Ukrainians from occupied territories were forcibly mobilized by Russians, including those from occupied Crimea. Some of them participated in the "special military operation.” Around 20% of all prisoners of war in Ukrainian camps for Russians are originally Ukrainians who were forced to sign a military contract. Many of them were forced, manipulated, or brainwashed, so it was not done of their own will.

But I would like to highlight that the average age of a Russian soldier is 35. This is not the war of young Ukrainians who reached the age of majority and were sent to the battlefield as cannon fodder. We see that the Russians’ main goal is to rebuild the army degraded by the Ukrainian side during the first month of the full-scale invasion, to have officers and other qualified personnel who will develop a strategy and conquer more and more territory. That is why they're investing in all these military patriotic movements and centers.

That is why I was really impressed when I saw that their All-Russian championship on drone racing will be for children aged seven. Should we next expect that children in kindergartens will assemble and disassemble a rifle? Their society is very militarized. This is the biggest problem. And now, Russian soldiers are those who are teaching Ukrainian children to fight tomorrow.

Alya: Thank you so much, Kateryna, for your time.

Dmitry Muratov, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and co-founder of Russia's shuttered Novaya Gazeta, has lent his name to an idea that sounds like pure humanitarianism. Russia frees some of the people it jails for opposing the war; in return, the United States eases its sanctions on the Russian economy.

The scheme did not even start in an American office. According to The Atlantic, which reported the plan on 29 September, it was Muratov himself who urged Donald Trump's envoy, John Coale, to try it. Coale had used the same model on Belarus, where some 500 prisoners were released, sanctions softened, and trade talks reopened.

Now, with Trump's approval, he wants to run it on the Kremlin.

The prisoners should go free. There is nothing to argue about there. No one jailed for anti-war words, for journalism, or for political dissent belongs in a cell. But here is the small detail: the price for their freedom is easing the pressure on a state that is waging war, not on the United States, which is being asked to ease the sanctions, but on Ukraine.

And here is where the real humanitarian arithmetic begins. We do not yet know which sanctions would be lifted. Whichever they are, the logic is the same: Moscow lets some of its political prisoners go, and Washington gives the Russian economy some breathing room in return. People walk out of Russian prisons, and the Kremlin gets more oxygen.

More money for the Russian state in wartime is not merely a figure in a bank report. It is more resources for the army, for missiles, for drones, for the war's continuation. And Ukrainians are the ones who feel it.

I can picture the Kremlin ghoul rubbing his hands at an idea like this. Now he can be not just president, but the director of a prisoner market: release a hundred today, jail three hundred tomorrow, so there is something to trade next time. New dissidents, journalists, activists, and merely inconvenient citizens he can pack away far faster than the West can lift a sanction.

The Kremlin ghoul can now be the director of a prisoner market: release 100 today, jail 300 tomorrow

A tidy little business model: Russia produces the prisoners, the West buys them back with its policy, and Ukraine settles the account.

Because if easing sanctions widens Russia's room to finance the war, then Ukrainians effectively get a very strange bill for someone else's humanism: a Russian political prisoner walks out of prison, and a Ukrainian gets a fresh portion of missiles and drones on their head.

By the way, about those Ukrainian civilians. By the estimates of international and Ukrainian rights groups, Russia is holding, or has held, some 16,000 of them illegally. The real figure may be higher, since not every case can be documented.

This is exactly where Muratov, as a Nobel peace laureate, might find his powers of persuasion useful. Why not put in a word for the Ukrainians in Russian prisons? The same people seized in occupied territory during "filtration," taken from their homes, buried under fabricated cases, held for years without a proper trial.

And among them are children.

And here onto the stage steps Russia's Baba Yaga of "child protection": Maria Lvova-Belova, the so-called presidential commissioner for children's rights. She herself told Putin, in public, about a boy from Mariupol she had taken into her care after he was removed from the occupied city. Ukraine and international organizations view such cases as part of a wider system of unlawful transfers of Ukrainian children to Russia. The International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for her arrest on exactly those charges: the unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children.

That is what Russian care for children looks like: take a Ukrainian child from Mariupol, carry him off to Russia, and set about turning him into a Russian. If this is how Russia's children's commissioner works in public, it is frightening to imagine what happens where there are no cameras and no international warrants.

Nobody is offering to lift a single sanction for them.

And Muratov's pacifist initiatives are not new, either. After the full-scale invasion, he was among the authors and promoters of the ceasefire appeals. One public statement, signed by 51 Nobel laureates, called for an end to the fighting, which Muratov later described as a plea for a "genuine ceasefire" before talks.

On paper it all looks wonderful: stop shooting, stop killing one another, make peace. But there is one small problem. Russia did not wander into this war alongside Ukraine. Russia launched the full-scale invasion itself.

And in these appeals, Muratov did not demand that the Kremlin withdraw its troops from Ukraine. He did not demand the de-occupation of Ukrainian territory. He did not put the question of responsibility for the aggression and the war crimes to Russia. The formula was far more convenient: just stop shooting.

But "stop killing each other" is a beautiful phrase for people who would rather not notice who attacked whom.

It turns aggressor and victim into two symmetrical sides, as though Ukraine and Russia had simply quarreled and now both must show wisdom and stop firing. There is just one nuance: if, after such a "peace," the Russian army remains on occupied Ukrainian territory, that is not an end to the aggression. It is a pause with a Russian flag on Ukrainian soil.

Now add the prisoner proposal on top. Russia does not withdraw its troops. Ukraine does not get its occupied territory back. The Kremlin answers for nothing. But a few Russian political prisoners are released, and for that, Russia's sanctions are eased too. And Ukraine, meanwhile, is simply supposed to stand to one side and rejoice that humanism has triumphed.

Ukraine is simply supposed to stand to one side and rejoice that humanism has triumphed.

Except there is a difference of principle. A Russian political prisoner can walk out of a Russian prison. A Ukrainian civilian can stay in one. And a Ukrainian soldier can be killed by a weapon Russia bought thanks to that same sanctions relief.

And then a very simple question arises for the great humanist and Nobel laureate: why should the freedom of Russia's political prisoners be bought at the expense of the freedom, the safety, and the lives of Ukrainians?

Editor's note. The opinions expressed in our Opinion section belong to their authors. Euromaidan Press' editorial team may or may not share them.

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Fourteen more Ukrainian children have crossed from Russian-occupied Kherson Oblast back onto Ukrainian-held ground, the oblast's military administration said on 29 September. They join a years-long effort to recover children from land Russia seized in 2022, with thousands more still deported or unaccounted for.

Ukrainian authorities say Russia has deported nearly 20,000 children since its 2022 full-scale invasion, and Zelenskyy insists the true figure is far higher. Those taken to Russia are placed in institutions or Russian families and pushed through Russian "re-education" aimed at erasing their Ukrainian identity.

These 14 add to roughly 2,000 children Ukraine has brought back since 2022—a recovery effort still dwarfed by the numbers Russia holds and keeps adding to.

Who made it out

The 14 are four boys and 10 girls, aged 6 to 17, said Oleksandr Prokudin, who heads the administration. Rescuers also brought back one young adult who had been deprived of parental care.

Each case shows what pushed the children toward the return. One 16-year-old boy was being forced onto Russia's military registration rolls under occupation, part of a pipeline that moves teenagers from a Russian passport toward conscription at 18. A 17-year-old girl had sought a Ukrainian education despite the risks and Russian control, Prokudin said. A 10-year-old girl, he added, had longed to come home and did all she could to reach safety.

The running tally

The children left through Bring Kids Back UA, the repatriation program President Volodymyr Zelenskyy launched in 2023, working with the Ukrainian charity Save Ukraine. That brings to 204 the number of children returned from occupied Kherson Oblast since the start of 2026, regional authorities said.

The wider deportation campaign

In 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued arrest warrants for Russian leader Vladimir Putin and his children's rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, over the illegal deportation of children from occupied Ukraine to Russia.