Ukrainian children found on Russian adoption sites

Ukrainian children who were abducted and taken to Russia in the early months of the Kremlin’s 2022 invasion have been put up for adoption by authorities, in one case under a false Russian identity, a Financial Times investigation has found.

Using image recognition tools and public records, as well as interviews with Ukrainian officials and the children’s relatives, the FT identified and located four Ukrainian children on the Russian government-linked adoption website usynovite.ru.

The findings add to the mounting body of evidence that the International Criminal Court, Ukrainian government officials and legal experts say point to alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Russia.

The children were abducted from state care homes and separated from their guardians and relatives in towns across the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine that fell under the control of Russia’s invading army in 2022. They range in age from eight to 15-years-old.

The children traced by the FT and whose identities were confirmed with their families by the Ukrainian authorities have ended up in the Tula region near Moscow and in the Orenburg region close to the Kazakh border. One of the children was taken to occupied Crimea.