Thousands of children were taken from occupied areas of Ukraine and forcibly deported to Russian-occupied territories or Russia itself, where adoption of the children has been fast-tracked.
One child, a 14-year-old girl named Anya, told The New York Times that she was taken against her will and is stuck in Russia. She said she was going to become a Russian citizen even though she wanted to return to her friends and family in Ukranian.
She told the Times that she did not want to leave. No one asked me.
According to recent reports, Russia is trying to raise Ukrainian children as Russians. Ukrainian officials said in April that Russian forces were deporting children. More than 8,700 people have been deported by the Ukrainian government, but it's hard to know.
Russian authorities oversaw the deportation of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia, according to US officials in September.
Legislation aimed at speeding up the process of granting Russian citizenship to Ukrainian kids and the deliberate removal of Ukrainian children by Russia are involved in the US efforts.
According to an Associated Press investigation, Russia has not given a number for how many Ukrainian children have been brought over. The children are shown as though they were abandoned and saved from the war, being welcomed with teddy bears, according to the Times.
Reports show that the children who have been deported did not have their parents with them. According to the Times, some of the children are being taken from institutional homes, but not all of them are orphans.
The children who were lied to and told their parents they were not orphans were identified. The action of removing children could be seen as an attempt at genocide or a desire to wipe out Ukrainian culture.
Russian forces have been accused of war crimes in the past. The rape and torture of civilians, as well as evidence of forced deportations, were found by investigators commissioned by the United Nations.
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