Ukrainian children abducted by Russia must be returned before any peace deal, official demands.

Aug 2025 : Ukraine Deputy Foreign Minister Mariana Betsa said in an interview, “Russia continues on a daily basis, mass deportation of our children”.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, nearly 20,000 children have been forcibly taken to Russia or Belarus, according to the organization Bring Kids Back. Only about 1,400 of those children have been returned to their families. Now, with talks of a potential peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, officials in Ukraine are demanding that all of the kidnapped children be returned before any conditions are made.

“This is a human tragedy“, said Ukraine Deputy Foreign Minister Mariana Betsa in an interview. “Russia continues on a daily basis mass deportation of our children. And it continues war crimes against our children. And they’re just the most vulnerable group of our people“.

Betsa said the pain parents suffer losing their children and the trauma the children endure is “unimaginable“. Once taken to Russia, the Ukrainian children have their “identity erased“, are “brainwashed“, and then put up for adoption with Russian families. “We will fight for every child to be back home”, Betsa said.

It was in March, 2025 – During President Trump’s call with Zelenskyy, the issue of abducted children was raised. The United States had been funding a program run by the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, which documented the forced deportations of thousands of Ukrainian children during the war. However, the program’s funding was recently cut, as the future of these abducted children are at stake; is not only the future prosecution of Putin for war crimes but also justice for Ukraine’s stolen children.

Using open-source intelligence and satellite images, Yale’s lab traced how senior Russian officials and government aircraft were involved in transporting the children. The team presented its findings to the United Nations. With the funding cut, the question remains: What will happen to the research and the prosecution efforts tied to it?

Team Maverick