Ukraine: Forcibly Deported Children

Debate between Johanna Baxter and Douglas McAllister

Wednesday 21st May 2025 Westminster Hall

[Johanna Baxter]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. Indeed, I will come later in my speech to what I hope the Minister will be able to set out.

The report also highlights that Ukrainian children in occupied areas are now being used to support Russia’s drone development and production efforts. Children are being made to assist a war machine.

Since the publication of our report, the situation has only worsened. Russia’s First Deputy Minister of Education recently announced that approximately 53,000 Ukrainian children from occupied territories will spend their summer holidays in camps—not in their homes or with their families, but scattered throughout occupied territories. These are not just numbers; they are children—sons and daughters—taken from their families, their culture and their country. Today’s debate is not just about numbers; it is about the stories of children such as Kira and Margarita.

Margarita was 10 months old—a baby—when she was taken from a children’s home in Kherson. She could not walk or talk, but she was already a target of the Russian regime. She was taken to Moscow on the excuse that she needed medical care, but she did not. She ended up in the arms of a senior Russian politician and close ally of President Putin. He adopted her, changed her name to Marina, changed her birthplace to a Russian city and registered her as his daughter. That baby girl, just months old, had her whole identity rewritten—erased. She is now legally Russian, and the truth is buried. That is not care; it is abduction in the uniform of bureaucracy.

Kira was an 11-year-old girl from Mariupol. At 10, she lost her mother. Then, during the invasion, she watched her father die—shot by Russian forces on their balcony as he tried to save what little they had left. She fled with her father’s partner, walking for a full day to reach her grandmother. Along the way, a landmine exploded, Russian soldiers came and Kira was taken, separated from her loved ones and told she would be sent to a remote orphanage in Russia if no one came to collect her. Weeks later, terrified and alone, she remembered she had a telephone. She called her grandfather. He found her, traumatised but alive, and brought her home. She is 11 years old. She said:

“The Russians took my childhood, my city, and my dad”.

Kira was one of the first children rescued by the Bring Kids Back initiative, supported by the United Kingdom, which to date has helped return 1,307 children, including two brought home over the weekend.

We now have clear and credible evidence, including from the Yale University humanitarian research lab, that approximately 8,400 Ukrainian children have been forcibly transferred to at least 57 so-called re-education camps. They span eight time zones, from occupied Crimea all the way to Magadan in Russia’s far east. Inside those camps, Ukrainian children are indoctrinated. They are told that Russia’s brutal invasion is justified. Ukrainian history is erased from textbooks and mentions of Ukraine as a sovereign nation are removed. This is not just the rewriting of the story, but its deletion. It is a chilling, systematic attempt to dismantle Ukrainian identity, starting with the youngest and most vulnerable.

Russia is not stopping at cultural erasure. In occupied territories, there is mounting evidence that more than 10,000 children are being trained in drone warfare. The training is gamified, turning it into some twisted kind of play, and taught through special engineering classes in which students are instructed in how to build and deploy drones for the Russian military. To make matters worse, occupation authorities in Donetsk and Luhansk have signed co-operation agreements with the Russian Young Army Cadets National Movement, with the goal of scaling up the recruitment of Ukrainian children into pro-Kremlin military patriotic youth organisations. According to the Institute for the Study of War, as many as 11,500 Ukrainian children may already be involved.

The Russian adoption system operates as a tool of administrative erasure; Ukrainian children are absorbed into a bureaucratic structure deliberately designed to erase their cultural and national identity. For those taken in infancy, this practice all but guarantees that an entire generation grow up on Russian soil, utterly unaware of their Ukrainian roots. This is not just occupation. It is indoctrination. It is militarisation. It is a deliberate, state-led campaign to steal Ukraine’s future one child at a time, and it is a war crime playing out before our eyes.

As the House will already know, the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for President Vladimir Putin and the so-called children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, for the war crime of unlawful deportation of children. As our report sets out, I believe there is sufficient evidence and scope to consider whether charges of crimes against humanity and genocide could also be considered under international criminal law. It is certainly clear that Russia’s actions are flagrant violations of international humanitarian law and international conventions and treaties to which Russia is a party.

To conclude, I am calling for the Government to work with our international partners to take all necessary measures to secure the immediate return of these children.

[Douglas McAllister (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Since her visit to Ukraine, she has worked tirelessly to raise the profile of this issue with her report, “Returning the Stolen Children of Ukraine”, on the Floor of the House and again today. She should be congratulated on all her work. On the practical measures that can be taken to help return the stolen children to their families, does she agree that the Minister should consider establishing a UK national day of action to continue her great work and help raise public awareness of this cause?