Ukraine: Forcibly Deported Children

Aphra Brandreth Excerpts

Wednesday 21st May 2025 Westminster Hall

[Aphra Brandreth (Chester South and Eddisbury) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. I thank and congratulate the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Johanna Baxter) for securing this debate on such an important topic, and for speaking so powerfully.

Last month, I visited Ukraine alongside colleagues on the Foreign Affairs Committee. I pay tribute to the officials from our Government and the Ukrainian parliamentarians and officials we met on the ground who are working tirelessly on this issue. We met representatives of Save Ukraine, an organisation committed to helping rescue and return children. At the time of our visit, it had successfully returned more than 612 children—a heroic effort—yet, as we have heard today, an unacceptably high number remain missing. At least 19,000 have been identified, and there are almost certainly many, many thousands more.

I want to share one account that I heard in Ukraine. Just outside Kyiv I visited a children’s centre, where I spoke to two young people who had been taken by Russia. Although both had thankfully been safely returned home to Ukraine, I cannot overstate how clearly traumatising the experience had been for them, and the impact of hearing their stories. The young man was separated from his mother and five siblings and taken to Russia to be re-educated. In reality, he was sent to a military camp where Ukrainian children are taught to forget their culture and home. Through indoctrination, they are trained to forget all they once knew of a peaceful life in Ukraine and are taught to be fighters, potentially one day against their own families. That is a truly horrific and often unreported consequence of Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine.

Yesterday, those of us on the Foreign Affairs Committee met our counterparts from the Rada’s Committee on Foreign Policy and Inter-Parliamentary Co-operation. We heard how Russia is targeting orphanages to take children. Those vulnerable children have suffered a great deal of trauma already, and are now being subjected to even more. We also heard of the difficulty of getting those children back. Their locations are often unknown to Ukrainian authorities, and their surnames are changed. It is clear that we must do more to support Ukraine in its efforts to identify, find and return those young people.

Both the previous Government and the current one have stood by Ukraine with regard to military support, and I know our Ukrainian friends are incredibly grateful for our unity. I urge the Minister to continue to provide humanitarian assistance through official development assistance. Earlier this year, I agreed with the Prime Minister’s decision to reallocate a portion of the ODA budget to bolster the defence budget, given the challenges and security problems that we currently face. When the Minister has discussions with officials and his colleagues at the Treasury ahead of publication of the out-turn data and future planned allocations annual report and accounts, will he reiterate the need of the Ukrainian people, and particularly those kidnapped children and their families? Will he support efforts, organisations and schemes that seek to see them returned? We need the ODA budget to be spent on vital causes, not vanity projects, and I am sure all here agree that this issue is of the utmost importance.

Since the start of the war, more than 600 children have been killed, 1,900 have been injured and at least 19 have been sexually abused. In this conflict, sexual violence is being used systematically as a grotesque weapon of war. Russia’s actions violate the Geneva conventions, international humanitarian law and United Nations Security Council resolution 1261. We must not stand by. Russia is waging war not just on Ukraine’s borders but on its future. It is trying to erase an entire generation. It is not just abducting children but trying to annihilate a national identity. I have heard two stories at first hand, but there are thousands more. We must see Ukraine’s stolen children returned.