Ukrainian Children Who Were Abducted Are Returning as Adults
By: Giorgio Provinciali
Live from Ukraine
President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly stated that Kyiv authorities have identified approximately 400 locations in Russia where kidnapped Ukrainian children are believed to be held. Thanks to joint efforts with the Vatican and other partners, Ukraine has brought home over 1,600, but thousands of minors remain deported or detained.
Officially, approximately 19,500 have been identified. This already horrifying figure, however, may only represent the tip of the iceberg, as each returned child reveals the workings of a system. These are not isolated incidents — or evacuations, as Russian propaganda claims — but rather a coherent system of pressure, blackmail, family separation, forced Russification, and, in many cases, militarization.
The stories of minors returned to Ukraine in recent weeks illustrate this with brutal clarity. Eight more Ukrainian children and adolescents have returned from Russian-occupied territories, including an eleven-year-old who had virtually never left his home for four years to avoid detection after his family refused to send him to the school imposed by the occupiers. That same group also included a twenty-one-year-old who was tortured after a search, during which the occupiers attempted to extract a confession of alleged collaboration with the Ukrainian army. In another case, Kyiv announced the return of another group of children from the occupation, including a boy left motherless, while his father had lost both legs in a drone strike; a sister and two brothers whose custody the occupiers threatened to take away for refusing to provide Russian documents; teenagers who continued to sing the Ukrainian national anthem in schools polluted by the Moscow regime; and a family forced to live on a mined road, under constant threat of death.
Even more emblematic is the story of an 18-year-old girl who returned to Ukraine after three years in Russia. Her family was forced to flee Mariupol’ in 2022, but she continued studying online at a Ukrainian school and began planning her return even before reaching adulthood. Here, too, the human element goes beyond the happy ending: that girl didn’t simply “return,” but, for three years, resisted a process of identity absorption designed precisely to prevent her from returning.
In many cases, occupiers threaten to take away children from parents who refuse Russian passports or documents. In others, they force children to study under school curricula rewritten by Moscow. In still others, they turn the homes of Ukrainians into invisible prisons: repeated searches, widespread surveillance, constant intimidation, and interrogations at gunpoint. Among the recently returned minors are a seventeen-year-old interrogated at gunpoint for his pro-Ukrainian stance; a sixteen-year-old threatened with separation from her mother; two brothers, aged 15 and 13, who miraculously survived a bombing; a child just a year and a half old, taken from his mother by the Russian Armed Forces; and a ten-year-old boy kept hidden at home by his father for years to protect him from forced assimilation.
In other cases, the coercion becomes even more sinister. For example, there is Bohdan, 18, against whom Russian law enforcement attempted to fabricate a criminal case by having him sign documents whose content and implications he did not understand. Another teenager, also named Bohdan, was reportedly sent to a psychiatric hospital and added to the Russian army’s military records. Yet another, Maksym, a 17-year-old with a congenital hearing impairment, came from an openly Ukrainian family whose home had been repeatedly searched.
The Kremlin does not limit itself to deportation or Russification.
It aims to militarize.It takes Ukrainian children removed from their communities, immerses them in propaganda, convinces them that Ukraine is the enemy, and then offers them military loyalty to Russia as a path to integration.
During a hearing in the United States Senate, Kateryna Rashevska, an expert with the Regional Center for Human Rights, documented 165 military camps where Ukrainian children are being Russified and militarized. Some were even sent to North Korea for military activities.
If fully confirmed, this pattern would mark a shift from the annihilation of identity to the functional preparation of minors as instruments of the Russian war. For this reason, the repatriation operations promoted by Bring Kids Back UA have value that goes beyond the numerical data, however significant those data may be.
In recent weeks, Ukraine has announced the return of groups of 8, 16, and 17 children and adolescents, along with particularly dramatic individual cases.
Each return provides us with detailed insight into the conditions those children endured and confirms the structure of the crime.
We are talking about a coercive continuum that has persisted since the beginning of the war, that is, at least since 2014.
During a prisoner exchange, Bohdan Kovalchuk, captured at 17 while trying to reach Toretsk to complete his studies and obtain a Ukrainian diploma, was also returned home. At the checkpoint, he was arrested by the Russians and accused of collaborating with the Ukrainian secret services. He returned after nine years. In the same exchange, the former mayor of Kherson, Volodymyr Mykolayenko, was also freed, calling his release his «second birthday».
Reducing all this to a humanitarian issue, however serious, is not enough. We are facing an operation that combines territorial occupation, cultural repression, family separation, psychological pressure, and ideological preparation.
The war that Russia has unleashed in Ukraine has lasted so long that many of the abducted children are now adults. Each returned life is worth far more than its individual biography. It concerns memory, language, and even the very idea of homeland that other children will carry with them as adults.
In 1.508 days of war, we recorded over 250 videos from ground zero and wrote more than 1,500 articles.
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兒時被綁架，成年才回歸
作者：Giorgio Provinciali
翻譯：旺財球球
烏克蘭前線報道
弗拉基米爾·澤連斯基總統多次表示，基輔當局已確認，俄羅斯境內約有400處地點，相信關押著被綁架烏克蘭兒童。通過與梵蒂岡和其他夥伴的共同努力，烏克蘭已接回1600多名兒童，但仍有數千名未成年人被驅逐或非法拘禁。
官方數據顯示，約有19,500名被確認身份。然而，這個已令人毛骨悚然的數字或許隻是冰山一角，因為每一個回歸的孩子都揭示了這一體係的運作。這些並非孤立事件——更不是俄羅斯宣傳機器所稱的“撤離”——而是一套有組織有係統的型為，包含脅迫、勒索、家庭分離、強製俄羅斯化，並在許多情況下還包括軍事化訓練。
（視頻：Alla和我在醫院報道，那裏收治了從頓巴斯逃離戰火、受傷的兒童——版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
（圖：我在一次俄方空襲時躲避炮火——版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
近幾周返回烏克蘭的未成年人的經曆，殘酷且清晰的展示了這一切。又有8名烏克蘭兒童和青少年從俄占區返回，其中包括一名11歲男孩，由於他家人拒絕送他去占領當局強製設立的學校，四年來幾乎從未出過家門以避免被發現。同一批人中還有一名21歲的青年，在一次搜查後遭到酷刑，俄軍試圖逼他認罪，承認其與烏克蘭軍方合作。另一起案例中，基輔宣布又有一批兒童從占領區被接回，其中包括一名失去母親的男孩，他父親在一次無人機襲擊中失去了雙腿；一名姐姐和兩個兄弟，因拒絕提供俄羅斯證件而被俄軍威脅要奪走監護權；在受莫斯科政權汙染的學校裏仍堅持唱烏克蘭國歌的青少年；以及一個被迫住在布滿地雷道路旁、時刻麵臨死亡威脅的一個家庭。
尤其具有象征意義的是一名18歲女孩的故事：她在俄羅斯待了三年後回到烏克蘭。她的家人在2022年被迫逃離馬裏烏波爾，但她一直通過網絡在烏克蘭學校學習，並甚至在成年前就開始策劃回國。在這裏，人性元素超越了所謂的“大團圓結局”：這名女孩並非簡單地“回來了”，而是在三年間抵抗著一種旨在阻止回歸、消除身份認同的機製。
（圖：我在烏克蘭尼日因的一處掩體拍攝到這些鏡頭，那裏的年輕烏克蘭人正在學習醫學——版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
（圖：在掩體內，Alla與一些從在大規模入侵一開始即從俄羅斯占領區逃出的難民交談——版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
在許多情況下，俄占領者威脅要將拒絕接受俄羅斯護照或證件的父母的孩子奪走。在其他情況下，他們強迫兒童按莫斯科改寫的課程體係學習。還有的，把烏克蘭人的家變成無形的監獄：頻繁搜查、大規模監控、持續恐嚇，以及在槍口下審訊。近期被遣返的未成年人中有一名17歲少年因其親烏克蘭立場在槍口下被審問；一名16歲少女被威脅要與母親分離；兩名分別為15歲和13歲的兄弟在一次轟炸中奇跡般生還；一名僅一歲半的孩子被俄軍從母親身邊帶走；還有一名十歲男孩，其父親為了讓他免受強製同化，將其藏在家中多年。
（視頻：我在基輔拍下這些鏡頭，就在一所幼兒園遭受俄方空襲之後——版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
在其他案例中，脅迫更為邪惡。例如，有位名叫博丹的18歲青年，俄方執法機構試圖通過讓他簽署他不了解內容與後果的文件來偽造刑事案件。另一名同名的青少年據報被送入精神病院並被列入俄軍的兵役檔案。還有一名叫馬克西姆的17歲少年，患有先天性聽力障礙，來自公開表明自己是烏克蘭人的家庭，他們的住宅屢遭搜查。
克裏姆林宮的目標並不限於驅逐或俄羅斯化。
更在於軍事化。
他們將烏克蘭兒童從他們的社區中帶走，讓他們沉浸於宣傳中，灌輸他們烏克蘭是敵人的觀念，隨後再將對俄羅斯的軍事效忠包裝成“融入社會”的道路。
（圖“：Alla和我在烏克蘭利沃夫“不可摧毀”康複中心錄製了這些鏡頭——版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
在美國參議院一次聽證會上，人權區域中心的專家卡特琳娜·拉謝夫斯卡記錄了165處對烏克蘭兒童進行俄羅斯化和軍事化的“軍事營地”。有些孩子甚至被送往朝鮮參加軍事活動。
若這一模式被完全證實，這將意味著從“消滅身份認同”轉向將未成年人功能性地培養為俄羅斯戰爭工具的新階段。正因如此，“讓孩子回家”推動的遣返行動，其價值已超越單純的數字，盡管這些數字本身也極為重要。
（圖：兒童與父母，看著自己居住的建築被俄方空襲擊中——版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
近幾周來，烏克蘭已宣布分批接回分別為8人、16人和17人的兒童與青少年群體，以及若幹極具戲劇性的個案。
每一次回歸都為我們提供了關於那些孩子所遭受境遇的詳盡信息，並證實了這一有組織犯罪的結構。
我們談論的是一種自戰爭爆發以來持續存在的脅迫性連續性，至少始於2014年。
在一次戰俘交換中，博丹·科瓦爾丘克也得以回國，他在17歲時試圖前往托雷茨克完成學業並獲得烏克蘭文憑時被俘。在檢查站，他被俄羅斯人逮捕並被指控與烏克蘭情報部門合作。他在被關押九年後才得以回到家鄉。同一次交換中，赫爾鬆前市長弗拉基米爾·米科萊年科）也被釋放，他稱這次獲釋是他的“第二個生日”。
（圖：Alla和我在基輔最大的難民點之一報道，那裏在俄羅斯空襲期間為烏克蘭兒童提供庇護——版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
將這一切僅簡化為人道主義問題，無論多麽嚴重，都是不夠的。我們麵臨的是一場結合領土占領、文化壓製、家庭分離、心理脅迫與意識形態塑造的係統性行動。
俄羅斯在烏克蘭發動的戰爭持續時間之長，致使許多被擄走的兒童如今已成年。每一個回歸的生命，其意義遠超其個人經曆本身。它關係到記憶、語言，甚至關乎未來其他孩子作為成人所攜帶的祖國觀念。
（圖：Alla和我在哈爾科夫一所學校的廢墟上錄製了這些鏡頭——版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
***
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