17 Ukrainian Children Were Abducted By Russians From Occupied Territories

 

More than a dozen Ukrainian children and teenagers were recently rescued from Russian-occupied territories in the country, officials announced this week.

Some of the 35,000 Ukrainian kids believed to have been abducted by Russian troops since the start of the war.

So far, 1,625 of the children have been returned to Ukraine so far, President Volodymir Zelensky said

Officials released photos of some of the 17 children and teenagers rescued, while protecting their identities.

Facebook/Bring Kids Back UA

A child stands on a road facing away from the viewer, draped in the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag.

One 17-year-old boy who was among those recently rescued was taken in the middle of the night by Russian soldiers and interrogated for hours at gunpoint. “He was threatened and intimidated because of his pro-Ukrainian stance,” Zelensky’s right-hand man Andriy Yermak wrote on X Thursday.

A 16-year-old girl who rejected a Russian school was allegedly threatened with being separated from her mother, Yermak wrote, while two other children — a 15-year-old boy and his 13-year-old sister — survived a munition strike that set their house on fire. 

The children, captured by Russian troops, were returned safely to Ukraine.

 But the siblings were then forced to choose, Yermak said.

“Either the children attend a Russian school, or the entire family must abandon their home,” Yermak wrote on X.

Some of the children rescued had lived in constant fear of being forced to join the Russian army, he said.

Children from a Donetsk orphanage eating at a camp in Zolotaya Kosa, Rostov region, Russia.AP

Shocking images from Russian state television have shown young Ukrainian boys and girls assembling and firing assault rifles, all while the Russian flag and a portrait of the Russian leader Vladimir Putin loomed in the background.

The abducted kids were also believed to have been forced to build drones for Russian, according to a report by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab earlier this month.

“This is not just indoctrination. This is another proof the use of children in a war machine,” said Mykola Kuleba, founder of Save Ukraine, one of the organizations working to rescue the kids.

Ukraine’s Third Army Corps released chilling drone footage this week alongside intercepted radio communications of Russian soldiers breaking into a home in Donetsk.

The soldiers allegedly killed the parents in front of their child, then took the girl hostage, Ukrainian officials said.

“Kill everyone indiscriminately — everyone. Well except the children,” a Russian commander is heard ordering the troops, before reportedly using her as a shield to advance deeper in the region.

The topic of the abducted children was thrust into the spotlight at the United Nations this week.

“One of the lowest crimes imaginable is to replace childhood with war and its cruelty,” Zelensky said at a meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. “It is fair and symbolic that the first crime Putin has been charged with is his crime against children.”

“If you look at all the horrors unleashed by Russia’s war, none hits deeper than the abduction of children,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “Behind each and every abduction is a family torment.”

Russia launched a twisted adoption catalog where kidnapped Ukrainian children were sorted by age, eye and color, and number of siblings, according to Save Ukraine.

The children were among 17 rescued from Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.

Facebook/Bring Kids Back UA

Even the Kremlin’s Children’s Rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, has publicly bragged about adopting a boy from the city of Mariupol, which was seized by Russian forces in 2022 following a bloody, months-long siege.

What do you think? Post a comment.

The children all had the misfortune to live in the now Russian-controlled region of Luhansk, and the partially-occupied Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in the southeast of Ukraine.  

Backs of three people, one draped in a Ukrainian flag, walking away from the camera.

Imagine soldiers breaking into your home, killing you and your spouse, and taking your child hostage. This is not a movie scene — it’s the everyday reality of Ukrainian families. As Russia seizes new Ukrainian territories, its soldiers execute entire civilian populations — killing parents in front of their child, then taking the girl hostage and using her as a human shield. And this is happening while world leaders stand at the UN General Assembly podium discussing the plight of children in armed conflicts. A reconnaissance drone in Donbas captured Russian troops storming a civilian home, murdering the parents in front of their daughter, and dragging the girl away. You can even hear the voice of a Russian commander ordering: “Kill everyone except the children.” Her fate is still unknown. And tragically, there are thousands of such stories. Russia claims it is “saving” children of Donbas. In reality, it makes them orphans by killing their parents — then distributes them into Russian families, where they are trafficked and sometimes turned into child soldiers. At Save Ukraine, we will keep searching for this girl and rescuing others like her. Our team has already saved nearly 900 children from occupation, including more than 160 orphans — those most at risk of being lost to Russia’s system. To rescue more children, we desperately need your help — to keep searching and saving while there’s still time. Because every child deserves life, safety, and a childhood.

(NYPost)