An estimated 35,000 Ukrainian children have been abducted by Russia, of whom 19,546 have already been identified but by the new year only 1943 have returned home. Of these, at least 20 have allegedly been sexually abused, according to the Ukrainian government portal Children of War. In the midst of these numbers, the wound runs across the front.

Snatched from their families or taken from orphanages, the children were deported to Russia, Belarus and beyond: at least two of them, aged 12 and 16, were taken to Songdowon, North Korea.

The testimonies of recovered children

They are children like Vladyslav, 16 years old. Caught in Melitopol, detained for ninety days. He witnesses the attempted suicide of a 24-year-old cellmate by slitting his wrists. He is later forced to clean up a blood-soaked torture cell.

Or like Oleksandr, 12 years old. Separated from his mother in a filtration camp in Mariupol, he is sent for adoption to a Russian family. What saves him is the obstinacy of his grandmother, Lyudmyla.

Illia again , 11 years old. Wounded during the Mariupol bombing that killed his mother, transferred by the Russians to Donetsk with fragments still in one leg, he was operated on without anaesthesia.

Finally Vlad, who had just come of age. Taken from his home in Kherson where his mother Tetiana also offered refuge to other children, he is moved between the camps and a military boarding school. Punished for removing a Russian flag, he is put in solitary confinement and beaten. He will only be released after being forced to record a video praising Russia.

The fate of deported children

In these 210 ‘re-education camps’ , these children are subjected to Russification courses aimed at erasing Ukraine from their biography. They are militarised, employed in drone production and often forced to change their names. The presidential initiative Bring Kids Back UA works on the reconstruction of individual dossiers, searching for minors one by one to facilitate return corridors, in cooperation with international mediators such as Qatar, South Africa and the Vatican.

The most emblematic case is that of MariaLvova-Belova, the Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights, who is the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court precisely for the deportation of these minors. She is alleged to have personally ‘adopted’ one of these minors as a propaganda tool. Filip, 15 years old, from Mariupol.

For a Europe that proclaims itself a community of law , the release of these children is not only a humanitarian issue, it is a political and moral test, the point at which we measure whether the rights of children are worth more than the fear of regimes.

Selection of the original reportage by Nanni Schiavo