April 9, 2025

Data Cutoff: April 8, 2:00 PM ET

Karolina Hird, Jakub Kostka, Lauren Thacker, Anjou Kang-Stryker, and Nikolai Sundstrom

Russia continues to publish the profiles of deported Ukrainian children on Russian adoption databases. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty television channel, Current Time, and international war crimes investigation initiative The Reckoning Project published a joint investigation on April 7 detailing the case of 48 Ukrainian children whom Russia deported from the Kherson Regional Orphanage between September and October 2022. The investigation found that while Ukraine has been able to repatriate 10 of the 48 children, most of the children remain in foster families in Russian-occupied Ukraine after Russian officials transferred them to the Yolochka orphanage in occupied Simferopol, Crimea. ISW previously reported on the fostering and adoption of children from the Kherson Regional Orphanage via Yolochka, which was implicated in neglect of children under its care before the full-scale invasion in 2022. Four of the children notably had their profiles listed on the Russian federal adoption database as of March 2026. The investigation noted that the adoption profiles do not list that the children are from Ukraine. Russia has been placing Ukrainian children on federal and regional adoption databases since at least 2016, after its first invasion of Crimea and Donbas in clear violation of international humanitarian and human rights law.

The Chechen Republic may be facilitating the deportation of Ukrainian children under the guise of medical necessity.  Kherson Oblast occupation senator Igor Kastyukevich reported on April 4 that the Grozny-based Chechen Clinical Hospital is prepared to treat children from occupied Kherson Oblast with maxillofacial injuries and pathologies. Kastyukevich personally thanked Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov for his support of children from occupied Kherson Oblast and noted that the Kherson Oblast occupation Ministry of Health will organize the transfer of children to Chechnya for maxillofacial treatment. While children from occupied Kherson Oblast may indeed receive needed medical care in Chechnya, Russia still appears to be operating outside the bounds of its international humanitarian and human rights requirements when it comes to using medical care as a pretext for the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia. Russian officials should first and foremost facilitate the treatment of vulnerable children in Ukraine or a neutral third-party state, but Russia has a documented history of using medical or psychological interventions as a justification for deporting Ukrainian children to Russia, many of whom do not return to occupied Ukraine after treatment. A December 2024 investigation by the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab found that the Russian medical system was complicit in performing medical examinations on deported children before placing them up for adoption in Russia.

• Russia continues to publish the profiles of deported Ukrainian children on Russian adoption databases.

• The Chechen Republic may be facilitating the deportation of Ukrainian children under the guise of medical necessity. 

• Russian federal security agencies and youth military-patriotic organizations held a tactical training camp to prepare Ukrainian youth for service in the Russian military and security apparatus.

• Russian occupation officials continue efforts to seize, nationalize, and redistribute residential and commercial properties in occupied Ukraine.

• Russian authorities are escalating systematic persecutions against women in occupied Crimea.

• Russia’s majority state-owned banks continue to consolidate their ownership of banking services and means of everyday exchange in occupied Ukraine.

• Russian officials continue to pursue housing projects en masse in occupied Ukraine, likely in part to support efforts to increase the population of occupied areas with resettled Russian citizens from Russia.

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