How Russia sells child abduction as rescue – and why some still buy it

Three years of working on the return of Ukraine’s stolen children has taught me to recognise a pattern so consistent it can only be called a system.

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Russia does not abduct children. Russia “rescues” them.

It does not occupy territories. It “liberates” them.

It does not erase Ukrainian identity. It “protects children from nationalist indoctrination”.

The vocabulary is always the same, and always the inverse of reality. It is a deliberate cognitive operation – and it is aimed at you.

Children as goods

There is a Russian word, “tovar”. It means goods: something to be owned, transferred, traded.

When Russian forces occupy Ukrainian territory, the children who live there become – in the logic of the Russian state – tovar. They belong to the occupation administration. Their identity, their family, their language, their memories: all of it can be replaced.

As of April 2026, Ukraine’s Ministry of Justice has documented 20,570 cases of deportation and forcible transfer of Ukrainian children. Human rights organisations estimate that hundreds of thousands more remain under Russian control: deported, forcibly transferred, or living on occupied territory at risk of either.

Children are placed in Russian families, orphanages, and military-patriotic camps. Their Ukrainian documents are replaced with Russian ones. In some cases, surnames are changed. Speaking Ukrainian becomes a disciplinary matter. Contact with friends in free Ukraine is treated as a crime.

The woman who complained about the boy she took

Filipp Holovnia was taken from Mariupol. Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s Children’s Rights Commissioner placed him with her own family when he was 15.

Later, she gave interviews about the experience, and complained that Filipp’s reading of pro-Ukrainian websites and constant fits had “complicated the family atmosphere”.

That he told her, “I love you, you’re my mother. But everything else, Moscow, Russia, annoys me.” “He said he loved Ukraine,” she recounted. “But gradually, his consciousness began to change.” She said with relief.

The architect of Russia’s child abduction system explained on Russian television that the child she had taken sang Ukrainian songs and did not want to become Russian, and described how she “overcame this behaviour”.

This is not evidence of rescue. It is a description of the deliberate destruction of a child’s identity, the very act Raphael Lemkin identified as the hallmark of genocide (Editor’s note: In 1947, Lemkin drafted a bill for the UN to criminalise genocide. A year later, the United Nations General Assembly adopted this bill as the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.). She published it herself. That gap between her self-perception and reality is the most precise definition of Russian propaganda I know. It deceives not only others, but itself.

The siblings separated forever

When Russia occupied the Kherson region, Oleksandr Yakushchenko was living in a family-type orphanage outside the city. After the occupation, he and the other children from the institution were taken to Russia and “distributed” among different foster families.

Oleksandr was placed with a family in Krasnodar Krai, who withheld his passport, preventing him from any return to Ukraine. He sent his friends a voice message: “Nobody here gives a damn about me. I’m just ruining everyone’s life. I can’t do it anymore.”

On January 10, 2024, Oleksandr took his own life. He was 18 years old. At the funeral, according to a friend who attended, his foster family said: “Thank God he’s dead. Fewer problems.”

He was buried in a day.

After his death, the Temryuk district website published a warm profile of the foster family. The headline: “There is enough love for everyone.” The article described “an atmosphere of kindness, comfort, and care for one another.” Missing from his funeral was Oleksandr’s sister Khrystyna who was also taken, and placed with a different family – a violation of Russia’s own Family Code, which prohibits separating siblings without exceptional justification.

Her Russian foster family sent her to a correctional boarding school in the Temryuk district. She could not say goodbye to her brother. Khrystyna has not gone missing – we know where she is. The Russian state knows exactly where she is and has refused to release her – they have decided that this child belongs to it, like tovar. This is what “rescue” looks like from the inside. Two siblings – now permanently separated.

The boys they want to make soldiers

Russia does not stop at displacing Ukrainian children. It militarises them.

In occupied territories, children are enrolled in Yunarmiya, a military-patriotic movement funded from the Russian federal budget, and trained in Zarnitsa 2.0, a paramilitary programme that includes weapons handling, drone operation, and instruction in cyberattacks. Participation is effectively mandatory.

Refusing draws attention, and disloyalty under occupation is a crime. This is a conveyor belt. First, a new identity with new documents. Then “patriotic education.” Then, the Russian army. Viktor Azarovskyi, Oleh Shokol, and Denys Vasylyk from occupied Melitopol understood what was happening. They were 16 and 17 when they were detained.

They were charged with terrorism, tried as Russian citizens, and sentenced in March 2026 to between seven and eight and a half years in prison. They were children when they were imprisoned and they will be men when they are released. Or they could secure their freedom by fighting for Russia, against their own homeland.

The logic of goods

Russia’s propaganda on this issue is not, in the end, very sophisticated. It relies on a single mechanism: inversion. Abduction becomes rescue. Occupation becomes protection. The destruction of identity becomes its preservation.

What is sophisticated is the exploitation of our instinct toward balance. When a state with nuclear weapons and a permanent UN Security Council seat insists that “the truth is somewhere in the middle,” many people, including some in positions of responsibility, will search for that middle even when it does not exist.

The question of whether Russia is acting in good faith with Ukrainian children has been answered. By Russia itself. On camera. In budget allocations. In the words of an ombudswoman who described, with satisfaction, how she “corrected” the boy she took.

There are no tovar here. There is a country that went to war against another country’s children, gave them new names, new documents, and new flags, and now calls anyone who objects a nationalist.

What comes next?

Oleksandr Yakushchenko is buried in Russia. His sister Khrystyna is in a closed institution and cannot come home. Viktor Azarovskyi is being offered freedom in exchange for fighting against the country he comes from. Filipp Holovnia was broken by a woman who described it on camera with satisfaction.

These are not statistics. They are not case numbers. And they are not goods. They never were. They have names. They have language. They have a country. None of these things belong to the people who took them.

Maksym Maksymov is the Head of the Bring Kids Back UA initiative, launched in May 2023 to document and secure the return of Ukrainian children deported or forcibly transferred by Russia.