Russia has deported more than 20,000 Ukrainian children and returned fewer than 3,000, Kallas says
Kyiv • UNN
Russia illegally removed 20,500 Ukrainian children from the occupied territories, Kaja Kallas said. The EU is working to return them.
Russia has illegally deported 20,500 children from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas stated this during a speech in the European Parliament, UNN reports.
Details
According to her, as of November 2026, Russia had returned only 2,790 children.
The way Ukrainian children have been treated over the past four years is the clearest example of Russia’s utter disregard for human life. Russia is able to sustain its appalling system of deporting, ideologically indoctrinating, and illegally adopting children only thanks to a network of individuals and organizations
The diplomat added that the EU continues to work on returning the abducted Ukrainian children and has already imposed sanctions on those who transfer children to Russia.
Context
Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, said that Russia had deported more than 20,000 children, while another 1.6 million minors and underage children are at risk of illegal transfer.
However, the actual scale of the crimes may be significantly greater, since Ukraine has no access to the temporarily occupied territories to verify the information.