{"id":18519,"date":"2024-07-14T11:02:15","date_gmt":"2024-07-14T08:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ukrcy.news\/?p=18519"},"modified":"2024-07-14T11:02:15","modified_gmt":"2024-07-14T08:02:15","slug":"46-children-were-taken-from-ukraine-many-are-up-for-adoption-in-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ukrcy.news\/2024\/07\/14\/46-children-were-taken-from-ukraine-many-are-up-for-adoption-in-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"46 Children Were Taken From Ukraine. Many Are Up for Adoption in Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"
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These children were living in a foster home when Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Then a group of Russian officials came and took them. Russian officials say the children were rescued. Experts say what happened to them could amount to a war crime.<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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The New York Times traced how a web of officials and politicians aligned with President Vladimir V. Putin\u2019s party carried out a campaign to permanently transfer Ukrainian children from Kherson.<\/p>\n

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As news of Russia\u2019s invasion spread through Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Dr. Natalia Lukina was waiting for a taxi at her home.<\/p>\n

It was 6 a.m., and she was eager to get to work at Kherson Children\u2019s Home, a state-run foster home for institutionalized children with special needs, where she served as a doctor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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By the time she arrived, the rumble of artillery fired by Russian troops advancing on Kherson City, the region\u2019s capital, was already reverberating through the hallways. The doctor and her fellow caregivers faced a wrenching dilemma: how to protect the dozens of vulnerable children.<\/p>\n

They were all infants and toddlers, and some had serious disabilities, such as cerebral palsy. Some had living parents who retained limited custody over them, while others had been removed from troubled homes or abandoned.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho else would have stayed behind to look after them?\u201d Dr. Lukina said about her decision to remain with the children. \u201cImagine if we all turned our backs and left?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Natalia Lukina was a doctor at Kherson Children\u2019s Home before the Russian invasion in February 2022.<\/span>Emile Ducke for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Olena Korniyenko, the director of the foster home and the children\u2019s legal guardian, had prepared emergency bags for the children two weeks earlier, and she had stocked the home with boxes of food, water and diapers.<\/p>\n

But the building was not equipped to withstand gunfire or shelling, and the police had already fled the city. When Ms. Korniyenko called the police chief to ask about using their underground bunker just 300 yards away, he warned her that the station would become a military target.<\/p>\n

With limited options, Ms. Korniyenko searched online for a map of nearby bomb shelters and found one within walking distance.<\/p>\n

Amid exchanges of fire, the staff carried the children and their mattresses by foot and stroller to a concrete basement, taking with them food, medicine, electric pumps and feeding tubes for the sickest children.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The children were moved to a makeshift shelter in Kherson, where a caregiver photographed them sleeping on the floor in their winter coats.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A local pastor got word of their plight later that day and urged the foster home staff to take the children to his church, where he could at least provide heat, electricity and food.<\/p>\n

So the staff moved the children again, sweeping them into hiding in the basement of Holhofa Church. They stacked boxes of diapers in the windows to keep anyone from seeing in.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The children were taken on Feb. 25, 2022, to Holhofa Church, where the staff captured video of them in hiding.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n
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One nurse, Kateryna Sirodchuk, said they were afraid that Russian forces would take the children away. \u201cWe feared that they could come and take everything under their control,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

And their fears soon came true: On April 25, 2022, Russian officials found the children and took them under their own authority, eventually moving them 180 miles from home \u2014 all while filming them for propaganda.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Russian-appointed officials published images of the children on state-run news outlets and Telegram, claiming to have rescued them.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n
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Evidence shows the transfer was part of the broader, systematic campaign by President Vladimir V. Putin and his political allies to strip the most vulnerable victims of the war of their Ukrainian identity. The New York Times reviewed Russian social media posts; obtained photos, videos, text messages and documents; and interviewed more than 110 caregivers, legal experts and Russian and Ukrainian officials to trace the lives and movement of the children as they were taken into Russian custody.<\/p>\n

What happened to them next, legal experts say, may amount to a war crime.<\/p>\n

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Two weeks into the invasion,<\/strong>\u00a0Russia\u2019s commissioner for children\u2019s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, sat across from Mr. Putin in a televised meeting to ask for his help.<\/p>\n

She wanted to resettle young Ukrainian children from child-care facilities caught in the crossfire of war. He promised to remove any legal \u201cred tape\u201d so they could be placed permanently with Russian families.<\/p>\n

In pronouncements before the invasion, Mr. Putin had made clear that he sought the complete cultural assimilation of Ukrainian towns and cities he believed were historically Russian. And now, as the officials shook hands, a plan for the permanent transfer and deportation of their youngest residents was set in motion.<\/p>\n

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A photo released by the Kremlin showed President Vladimir V. Putin meeting with Maria Lvova-Belova in Moscow on March 9, 2022. <\/span>The Kremlin<\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cThey believe deep down that the children are Russian,\u201d said Serhii Plokhy, a Ukraine historian at Harvard University. \u201cYou speed up their Russian-ness by kidnapping them.\u201d<\/p>\n

For weeks, Ukrainian officials and police officers had struggled to find a way to evacuate the children from Holhofa Church, which was by then occupied territory. They blamed Russia for refusing to open a humanitarian corridor to allow citizens to flee from the shelling.<\/p>\n

In April, a Ukrainian commissioner made a plea on Telegram to help rescue them,\u00a0publicizing<\/a>\u00a0their location in the process.<\/p>\n

Hours later, armed men led by a Russian official who called himself \u201cNavigator\u201d\u00a0showed up<\/a>\u00a0at the church and demanded that the children be returned to Kherson Children\u2019s Home. Cameras from a Crimea-based propaganda outlet filmed their arrival, and the resulting story accused the Ukrainian authorities of kidnapping the children.<\/p>\n

The pastor protested, claiming the children were safer in his basement. But the caregivers had little choice but to obey the orders and take the children back to the foster home in Kherson City, where occupation forces had a tighter grip.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A Crimea-based propaganda outlet filmed Russian officials arriving at Holhofa Church on April 25, 2022. They demanded that the children be returned to Kherson Children\u2019s Home. <\/span>Crimea News<\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n
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Dr. Lukina later said the move made her suspect that the children would eventually be taken from Ukraine, because \u201cif they didn\u2019t need those children, why would they have made us leave the church?\u201d<\/p>\n

In the months that followed, entourages of armed men in Russian military uniforms made frequent, unannounced visits to the foster home to monitor the children and their caregivers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey asked, \u2018Are all of the children here?\u2019\u201d Dr. Lukina recalled. \u201cWe understood that if the children weren\u2019t there, we would be gone, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A nurse took photos of the children after they returned to the foster home in April 2022.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n
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The children remained in the home for the next several months.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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By the spring of 2022,<\/strong>\u00a0the occupation of Kherson had become a template for the forced assimilation of a Ukrainian city and its residents: A new occupation government was appointed in Kherson, and a Russian flag\u00a0was raised<\/a>\u00a0outside the foster home, where politicians and armed soldiers made trips\u00a0delivering aid<\/a>\u00a0to the children.<\/p>\n

Dr. Lukina scoffed when she recalled some of the impractical donations, which included Russian textbooks and huge packs of soda.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know that children can\u2019t drink soda, right?\u201d she said. \u201cThey probably just wanted to show the world that they were saving Ukrainian children.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the next several months, Russian officials documented their efforts to help the children on their popular channels on Telegram, a messaging platform used widely in Russia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\nMr. Kastyukevich, \u201cNavigator,\u201d publicized his visits to Kherson Children\u2019s Home on Telegram.<\/span>Credit<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Igor Kastyukevich, via Telegram<\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cNavigator,\u201d the man who had ordered the children removed from the church, visited the foster home repeatedly. He would later be identified as Igor Kastyukevich, a Russian member of Parliament from Mr. Putin\u2019s political party, United Russia.<\/p>\n

Anna Kuznetsova, a deputy chairwoman in the Russian Parliament and Ms. Lvova-Belova\u2019s predecessor as children\u2019s rights commissioner, traveled from Moscow to deliver baby products\u00a0on behalf of the party<\/a>. \u201c#WeDon\u2019tAbandonOurOwn,\u201d she\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0on Telegram, using a pro-war hashtag to suggest that the children belonged to Russia.<\/p>\n

In interviews with The Times, Russian officials echoed that view, saying that the children from Kherson were Russian.<\/p>\n

In May, Mr. Putin fulfilled his promise to Ms. Lvova-Belova by issuing a presidential decree that eased citizenship requirements: In Kherson and other occupied regions, Ukrainian caregivers could now file for Russian citizenship on behalf of Ukrainian foster children and orphans.<\/p>\n

The decree also expedited the process so that children could become Russian citizens in 90 days or less, instead of up to five years.<\/p>\n

The next month, Ms. Korniyenko, the director of the foster home, was summoned to Kherson\u2019s Ministry of Health, now run by the occupation authorities. A Russian-backed official asked her to remain the director, but under his supervision. She was even offered a Russian passport.<\/p>\n

But Ms. Korniyenko refused. She\u2019d had enough of the occupiers, who, she said, intimidated the staff by asking them about their political views in a test of their allegiance and carried guns while monitoring the children.<\/p>\n

Dr. Lukina resigned, too. She cared deeply about the children, but she didn\u2019t want to have any role in what Russian-backed officials might do to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want to take part in it,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I was afraid that they would take me away as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

In search of a new director, the occupation authorities turned to Dr. Tetiana Zavalska, a pediatrician at the foster home who often worked night and weekend shifts. She was sympathetic to the new occupation administration and made clear her pro-Russian views.<\/p>\n

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The home\u2019s new director, Dr. Tetiana Zavalska, was photographed with a Russian lawmaker, Yana Lantratova, who posted about her visit to the foster home on Telegram.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Dr. Zavalska encouraged the occupation authorities to formally register the foster home as a business under the new Russian-backed administration, in order to confer legitimacy to their control over the Ukrainian home and its children.<\/p>\n

It was registered that very month.<\/p>\n

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A signed order appointed Dr. Zavalska as acting director of the foster home on June 4, 2022.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n
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An official document revealed that the foster home was registered under the new Russian-backed administration weeks later.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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In August, the Russian state-run television network RT ran a segment celebrating Kherson\u2019s occupation that featured the foster home, now a legal entity in their eyes. As the host,\u00a0Anton Krasovsky<\/a>, approached the home\u2019s entrance, he derided the inscription on a plaque affixed to the wall.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe writing is still in Ukrainian,\u201d he said, before looking up. \u201cBut the flag is ours: Russian. It will always be so.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Zavalska, the new director, led Mr. Krasovsky on a tour of the building, pausing at the dining room, where some of the children sat at tables in their diapers.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnjoy your meal,\u201d he said, as the camera panned across blank faces. \u201cSay thank you,\u201d a caregiver told the children. Only two of them appeared to oblige.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Anton Krasovsky, a pro-war commentator, visited Dr. Zavalska and the children at Kherson Children\u2019s Home for a documentary that aired on RT in August 2022.<\/span>RT<\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n
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Later in the segment, Dr. Zavalska sat for an interview and described Ukraine\u2019s president as a \u201cclown.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am putting my hope in Russia,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Broadcasts like these, which highlighted Russia\u2019s efforts to absorb Ukrainian children from occupied territories, were a regular feature on local news outlets in Russia.<\/p>\n

Ms. Lvova-Belova, the children\u2019s rights commissioner, was filmed delivering children who had been taken from facilities in the Donbas region, in eastern Ukraine, to new caregivers. She announced that they had become Russian citizens.<\/p>\n

On Telegram, Ms. Lvova-Belova said that she herself had\u00a0fostered<\/a>\u00a0a Ukrainian teenager, who then\u00a0obtained<\/a> Russian citizenship.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Russian news cameras captured Ms. Lvova-Belova escorting children from the Donbas region to families in Russia in the summer of 2022, in some cases with new Russian birth certificates and citizenship documents.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n
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Some experts on the region view these actions as a publicly orchestrated campaign by the Kremlin to justify the invasion and cast Mr. Putin as a savior.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is Putin\u2019s version of doing God\u2019s work,\u201d said Andrew S. Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. \u201cIt\u2019s utter theater laced with this pseudo-historical view that there\u2019s no such thing as Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Mr. Putin\u00a0<\/strong>illegally annexed<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0Kherson and three other regions, Ukrainian forces began a military campaign to retake Kherson City.<\/p>\n

Russian officials, fearing they might lose their grip, came up with a plan for the children in the foster home. In a private online chat for medical students, health officials in Russian-occupied Crimea recruited volunteers to help move them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Times obtained, and redacted, a private message sent to medical students in Crimea on Oct. 20, 2022.<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n
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Natalia Kibkalo, a nurse who had worked at the home for 30 years, had just put nearly a dozen children to bed, all sick with Covid, when she heard the news: The children would be removed in the morning.<\/p>\n

Dismayed, she could not sleep. Instead, she and other caregivers spent the night sewing the children\u2019s names into their jackets and organizing bundles of clothes for them.<\/p>\n

The next morning, on Oct. 21, she changed diapers and fed the children, following the normal pattern of their days. But she couldn\u2019t stand the thought of helping to send them away and took a taxi home.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe understood that we couldn\u2019t do anything, that we could not stop it from happening,\u201d Ms. Kibkalo said. \u201cI don\u2019t know how I could have lived after seeing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Around 8 a.m., ambulances and white buses marked with the letter Z, a symbol of the Russian invasion, arrived at the foster home.<\/p>\n

The group included Mr. Kastyukevich, \u201cNavigator,\u201d as well as the Crimean health minister at the time \u2014 also a member of Mr. Putin\u2019s political party \u2014 his deputy, the student volunteers and several administrators from another foster home who would eventually become the children\u2019s new caretakers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Igor Kastyukevich <\/strong>Member of the Russian Parliament<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Konstantin Skorupskiy <\/strong>Former health minister of Crimea<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Anton Lyaskovskiy <\/strong>Deputy health minister of Crimea<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Tetiana Zavalska <\/strong>Newly appointed foster home director<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Aleksandr Vasyukov <\/strong>Former director at Yolochka, a children’s home<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Margarita Suslova <\/strong>Former deputy director at Yolochka<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Yevgeniya Dmitrievskaya <\/strong>Social worker at Yolochka<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Vitaliy Utkin <\/strong>Facilities manager at Yolochka<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n
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Dr. Zavalska gathered the children\u2019s personal legal documents and medical records, preparing case files for each one.<\/p>\n

Outside the home, Mr. Kastyukevich held one child in his arms and kissed him before passing him on as, one by one, the names of the 46 children were called out. Then they were carried onto the waiting buses and ambulances in their winter coats.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Russian officials removed the children from Kherson Children\u2019s Home on Oct. 21, 2022, publicizing their efforts on Vkontakte, a popular social media platform.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n
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The convoy left the foster home later that morning, traversing the river in a perilous journey over a makeshift pontoon. By evening, they had arrived at their final destination.<\/p>\n

The whereabouts of the children<\/strong>\u00a0were never formally disclosed to Ukrainian officials, they said. But Russian officials left clues on Telegram.<\/p>\n

The children were taken to the Crimean capital, Simferopol, and divided between two children\u2019s facilities, including Yolochka, whose staff had previously been investigated for negligence.<\/p>\n

Mr. Kastyukevich, who arrived with fur booties and mittens for the children, wrote\u00a0on Telegram<\/a>\u00a0that the conditions were \u201cmuch better than before.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Times obtained undated photos of the children from their new caregivers in Crimea.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Russian officials\u00a0have argued<\/a>\u00a0that the removal was an act of humanitarian intervention and legal under their Constitution because they annexed Kherson and controlled its population.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter who they are and who they were,\u201d said Svetlana Scherbakova, a child services director in Crimea. \u201cThe children now have a peaceful sky over their heads.\u201d<\/p>\n

But human rights experts say Russia\u2019s national laws do not override international obligations.<\/p>\n

While temporarily evacuating children for their safety is\u00a0permissible<\/a>\u00a0during conflict, it must follow\u00a0strict protocols<\/a>. Because Russia has not formally tracked the children\u2019s movement or given intermediaries access to the children, the evacuation is a\u00a0forcible transfer<\/a>\u00a0under international humanitarian law, according to Stephen J. Rapp, a former U.S. ambassador at large for global criminal justice.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat Russia views as a humanitarian mission is a blatant war crime,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

When Ms. Lvova-Belova, the children\u2019s rights commissioner,\u00a0traveled<\/a>\u00a0from Moscow to visit the home in Crimea, she said her office would help place the children with Russian foster families, but only if their birth parents could not be identified in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

This was not always true.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Irina Klyueva, the local children\u2019s rights commissioner in Crimea, visited the children with Ms. Lvova-Belova on Oct. 28, 2022.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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At least one set of parents said they learned their children were in Crimea only when Times journalists visited them in Kherson six months later \u2014 even though documents showed that Russian officials had their names and address.<\/p>\n

Their children, Mykola, who had autism, and Anastasiya Volodin, who had cerebral palsy, were placed in state custody years ago after the couple was deemed unable to care for them. Ukrainian courts had yet to decide on their parental rights, but the couple never imagined that their son and daughter might be taken from Kherson.<\/p>\n

\u201cI won\u2019t allow anybody to adopt them,\u201d said their father, Roman Volodin.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Roman and Viktoriya Volodin, the birth parents of Anastasiya and Mykola Volodin. <\/span>Emile Ducke for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n
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Anastasiya\u2019s Ukrainian birth certificate. <\/span>Emile Ducke for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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In the winter of 2022,<\/strong>\u00a0the new caregivers, along with Dr. Zavalska, the appointed legal guardian, took steps to formally integrate the children in Russian society, even though some of them had birth parents in Ukraine who still had legal rights or who were known to the Russian authorities.<\/p>\n

First, the caregivers applied for Russian birth certificates for the children \u2014 including the Volodin siblings \u2014 and translated their names into Russian.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Times obtained, and redacted, a Russian birth certificate for Mykola, issued on Jan. 16, 2023. His name was translated into Russian as Nikolay.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The caregivers also arranged for the children to get Russian social security numbers, saying it was a requirement for the children to receive medical care.<\/p>\n

The new documents were inadvertently revealed in a Telegram post by Russian-appointed\u00a0officials<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A photograph of Alla Barkhatnova, a Russian-appointed official, signing paperwork was posted on Telegram.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n
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The post revealed that the children had been given new Russian social security numbers and identity documents.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Eventually, the children received Russian citizenship, the final step necessary to make them eligible for adoption and permanent placement with Russian families.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Times obtained, and redacted, a Russian document that confirmed Anastasiya Volodin had become a Russian citizen.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Legal experts said that the new documents, along with the translation of their names and their new nationalities, revealed an intent by the Russian authorities to strip the children of their Ukrainian identity, in violation of the\u00a0Convention on the Rights of the Child<\/a>. It may also amount to a war crime.<\/p>\n

In December 2022, Mr. Putin signed yet another decree, allowing caregivers in occupied territories to renounce the Ukrainian citizenship of children in their custody.<\/p>\n

Emboldened Russian officials said that there were no plans to repatriate children to Ukraine and that the children would continue to receive the \u201cfull support\u201d of the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese children now have Russian documents,\u201d Mr. Kastyukevich said in an interview. \u201cLet\u2019s move on.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first anniversary<\/strong>\u00a0of the war brought\u00a0presidential state awards<\/a> from Mr. Putin to the two Crimean officials \u2014 the health minister at the time and his deputy \u2014 who helped orchestrate the transfer of the children from Kherson.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Crimea\u2019s former health minister, Konstantin Skorupskiy, received the award in March 2023.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n
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His deputy, Anton Lyaskovskiy, was also honored for his role in moving the children.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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But the very next day, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court\u00a0issued arrest warrants<\/a>\u00a0for Mr. Putin and his children\u2019s rights commissioner, accusing them of \u201cunlawfully\u201d taking \u201cat least hundreds of children\u201d from children\u2019s homes across Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no suggestion that this was a temporary relocation after which the children would be repatriated,\u201d said Payam Akhavan, a former prosecutor at The Hague.<\/p>\n

Neither Mr. Putin\u2019s office nor Ms. Lvova-Belova\u2019s office responded to multiple requests for comment from The Times. But in public statements, the commissioner pledged to continue her work. At a news conference last year, Mr. Putin\u2019s office\u00a0dismissed<\/a>\u00a0the warrants as \u201cpetty.\u201d Months later, Mr. Putin\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0there would be no \u201cobstacles\u201d to returning the children \u2014 so long as their parents traveled to claim them.<\/p>\n

It is unlikely that either official will face trial, but legal experts described the case against them as \u201cbulletproof,\u201d citing the abundance of evidence that can be traced through open-source data.<\/p>\n

There is no consensus, though, on how many children were forcibly transferred or deported to Russia, in part because of Ukraine\u2019s decentralized child-care system. Ukraine claims the total number is about 19,500 children, but in interviews, officials in Kyiv struggled to break down or verify their data.<\/p>\n

It has been 19 months since the children were removed from the foster home. A compilation of their images \u2014 from Kherson to Crimea \u2014 reveals how much they\u2019ve grown in that time, making them harder to recognize even for their Ukrainian caregivers.<\/p>\n

That may also pose a challenge to Ukrainian investigators, who are trying to track and return the children, and who have\u00a0opened criminal cases<\/a>\u00a0against Mr. Kastyukevich, \u201cNavigator,\u201d and Dr. Zavalska, the director.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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