An Associated Press investigation has found that Russia’s strategy to take Ukrainian orphans and bring them up as Russian is well underway. It’s one of the war’s most explosive is…
By SARAH EL DEEB, ANASTASIIA SHVETS and ELIZAVETA TILNA
She had no idea her dilemma would lead her straight into a battle against Russia, with the highest stakes of her life.Russia’s open effort to adopt Ukrainian children and bring them up as Russian is already well underway, in one of the most explosive issues of the war, an Associated Press investigation shows.
Whether or not they have parents, raising the children of war in another country or culture can be a marker of genocide, an attempt to erase the very identity of an enemy nation. Prosecutors say it also can be tied directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has explicitly supported the adoptions.
Russia also has prepared a register of suitable Russian families for Ukrainian children, and pays them for each child who gets citizenship — up to $1,000 for those with disabilities. It holds summer camps for Ukrainian orphans, offers “patriotic education” classes and even runs a hotline to pair Russian families with children from Donbas.
It’s very hard to pin down the exact number of Ukrainian children deported to Russia — Ukrainian officials claim nearly 8,000. Russia hasn’t given an overall number, but officials regularly announce the arrival of Ukrainian orphans in Russian military planes. Lvova-Belova has been sanctioned by the United States, Europe, the U.K., Canada and Australia. Her office referred the AP to her reply in a state-owned news agency that Russia was “helping children to preserve their right to live under a peaceful sky and be happy.”
But no wall could keep out the war. Every day, Timofey awoke at 6 a.m. in the bitter cold and chopped wood for a bonfire to cook food. All he wanted to do was to finish his work and sleep — only to have to wake up and do it again. A friend who had joined the fighting offered to take him out of Mariupol. He refused. He knew he would never forgive himself if he left his siblings behind.
At least, Timofey thought, he could tell his mother he had kept the children safe. He was close to his mother, and they were alike, he and she — both tough survivors who would stick it out to the end no matter what.“It’s great that they are alive,” she replied. “But we are already abroad.” This time around, at least 96 children have been returned to Ukraine since March after negotiations. But Ukrainian officials have tracked down the identities of thousands more in Russia, and the names of many others simply aren’t published.
“It was not decided at our level,” she said. “She wants to be with her family. After all, she has no one else.” But this nightmare with her children, she thought, was the hardest thing yet. Although Mariupol was less than 100 kilometers away from her home in Vuhledar, it was impossible to reach safely because of bombardment. In the meantime, her 18-year-old biological daughter, Rada, was at a boxing competition near Kharkiv, another front-line city.
Then, on March 1, their connection was lost. She thought her kids were going to be evacuated to Zaporizhzhia, so she and her husband went there, with books of fairy tales and other treats. But two days after they arrived, the state ordered Zaporizhzhia itself to be evacuated instead. Lopatkina continued to push Russian and Ukrainian officials incessantly. She sent them photocopies of Ukrainian documents proving her guardianship. She told them some of the children were sick, and worried that nobody had even asked about their medication.“Every day they turned the children against us,” she said. “’Your parents abandoned you … We will transfer you to the best families. Here you will have a better life.
She said she had reached out to the children’s Ukrainian foster mother, who didn’t mind the arrangement. He thinks starting his life anew will give him experience, and he looks forward to seeing Russia. But he is also worried about not being accepted as a Ukrainian. He will give it a go for a decade to try and make a fortune, and then return to Ukraine.
“I’m going to Moscow, I’ve already seen the family and everyone,” she said. “I liked the mom from the very beginning.”In the DPR, Timofey didn’t want a new life — he wanted his old one back. Angry and miserable, he argued with officials and ate almost nothing. The little children repeatedly asked when they could go home to their mother. They were badly fed, slapped and cursed, Timofey said.
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