Europol and partners trace 45 ‘forcibly transferred’ Ukrainian children

The European Union’s law enforcement agency says investigators have traced 45 Ukrainian children forcibly transferred to Russia, Belarus or occupied Ukrainian territory during the Russia-Ukraine war.

In a statement on Monday, Europol said details uncovered about the children were passed over to Ukrainian authorities to support their ongoing investigations.

Information about the children was discovered using publicly available information known as OSINT (open-source intelligence) during a two-day “hackathon” that saw 40 experts from 18 countries, the International Criminal Court (ICC) and non-governmental partners joining forces in The Hague, the Netherlands.

Kyiv has identified 19,546 children who it says were forcibly taken from occupied Ukrainian regions since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbouring country in February 2022.

“Some of these children have been adopted by Russian nationals, while others are being held in re-education camps or psychiatric hospitals,” Europol said.

The list could be far from final, as Ukrainian officials believe that some children lost their parents during the hostilities and cannot get in touch with their relatives in Ukraine.

Last month, a United Nations international commission of inquiry accused Moscow of committing “crimes against humanity” by forcibly deporting thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia and obstructing their return.

The ICC has issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for alleged war crimes involving the unlawful deportation and transfer of children, allegations denied by Moscow, which says it has been evacuating people voluntarily from a warzone.

Russia maintains that it transferred Ukrainian children from captured areas for their own safety and is prepared to return them to their families under conditions it deems appropriate.

The issue is highly sensitive in Ukraine and remains central to every new round of negotiations for a potential peace agreement between Kyiv and Moscow.

“The aim is genocide of the Ukrainian people through Ukrainian children,” Daria Herasymchuk, a presidential adviser on children’s rights, told Al Jazeera in June 2025. “Everybody understands that if you take children away from a nation, the nation will not exist.”