Adopted by Russia
Hundreds of Ukrainian orphans taken from the Donbas region are now stranded in the Kremlin’s orphanage system.
JUNE 11, 2024
Hundreds of children from Ukraine’s contested Donetsk and Luhansk regions, also known as Donbas and controlled by Russian separatists, are stranded in the Russian orphanage system. The Russian government no longer reports on them, and Ukraine has not had complete information about them since 2014. Journalists from Verstka and Important Stories located profiles for 285 such children in Russia’s federal orphanage database, confirming the identities of the children and speaking with them.
*Names of minors, along with some place names and biographical information, have been changed for privacy purposes.
Evacuation: ‘We’re Leaving for Three Days’
“It all happened quickly, and no one understood what was going on,” said 17-year-old Marina Kramorova, remembering the events of Feb. 18, 2022. “They told us to pack the essentials because we were leaving for three days. Our caretakers helped us pack small bags, and the next day we were on buses.”
On that day, local authorities began evacuating all 234 students of Boarding School No. 4 from the town of Amvrosiivka in the region of Donetsk to the Kursk region in Russia. Marina left the place she had lived with her older brothers for seven years — since the second grade, when their adoptive mother got divorced and put them in boarding school because she could no longer support them. She has no memory of her biological parents, residents of Mariupol.
Another large group of orphans — also from Donetsk — was sent to the Rostov region of Russia on Feb. 18 or 19, 2022.
On Feb. 2, 2022, an announcement was posted on the website of the Ministry of Education and Science for the self-described Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR): 626 orphans were now living in Russia. The Kursk and Rostov regions were the biggest hubs for children who had been evacuated from orphanages and boarding schools in the Donetsk region.
“Thanks to the Russian Federation for protecting these children’s lives!” the Ministry of Education and Science’s announcement concluded. “We believe that soon a long-awaited peace will arrive in our republic and they will all return home!”
On February 24, 2022, Russian troops began their full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the orphans, who’d thought they were leaving for just a few days, were now refugees.
‘Dear, sweet grown-ups, stop the war’
In the spring, the orphans who had been evacuated to the Kursk and Rostov regions of Russia began attending school. Volunteers visited them regularly, to entertain the children and deliver clothing, hygiene products and toys.
In March 2022 in Kursk a drawing contest was held for children from the Amvrosiivka boarding school — they were asked to draw the perfect world, and then their art was given to Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. On that day, former “Star Factory” contestant Nikita Malinin performed for the orphans. “May there always be Mama, may there always be me,” he told the camera, quoting a popular song.
In the Rostov region, the children of Donbas were visited by a group that was searching for World War II artifacts. Wearing military uniforms, they handed out clothes, toys and sweets. Volunteers worried that the preschoolers would mistake the group for soldiers and be afraid. But the opposite happened: The children happily told their guests that they wanted to become soldiers themselves. The visit ended with a performance: the songs “Don’t Take the Sun Away from Children” and “Horse,” as well as a sword dance with a Cossack saber.
“Just imagine: You’re living somewhere, then you’re violently uprooted and moved somewhere else. They said it would be for three days.”
“Dear, sweet grown-ups, stop the war and I’ll decorate the springtime with colorful stars for you,” children from the Donetsk region sang onstage at the Romashka summer camp, for a group of officials who’d brought them notebooks, pencils and backpacks for school.
Costumed performances of Russian fairy tales, trips to the circus, “sobriety lessons” for teenagers, chess tournaments, excursions to St. Petersburg and Moscow — this was how children from the Donetsk region spent their first six months in Russia. Some told reporters they didn’t even want to leave, while others expressed disappointment that their return home was being put off or canceled altogether.
“When we found out it would be long-term, we were very upset,” said 17-year-old Veronika, a student of the Amvrosiivka boarding school. “We wanted to go back.”
“They helped us, brought us clothes, bikes and skates — but it didn’t help me psychologically,” said Marina. “Just imagine: You’re living somewhere, then you’re violently uprooted and moved somewhere else. They said it would be for three days.”
Marina called herself a troubled teen and said she thinks the change of situations harmed her, causing her to “misbehave” in Kursk. Six weeks after the evacuation, she had an argument with the director of the boarding school and ran away.
“I took off and ran almost to the city outskirts, but there was slush and big, mean dogs,” Marina said. “I called one of the caretakers and asked her to come get me. They held on to my arm and said, ‘What if you run off again?’ Then they brought me back to the boarding school and asked me to pack my things. They said I’d had a nervous breakdown and took me to a psychiatric hospital. I spent two weeks there. Because of the pills, I wanted to sleep all the time, and I could hardly even smile — my muscles were so relaxed. But I eventually became friends with the head doctor, who gave me permission not to take the medication. And the psychologist there listened to me.” (Eds: She does not have any certificates of hospitalization; journalists were unable to contact the attending doctors.)
Guardianship: ‘Our country is full of surprises’
In March 2022, just three weeks after the first evacuated children were placed in temporary accommodation centers, Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova discussed them in a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Every displaced child, regardless of citizenship, should be given the chance to have a family,” Putin concluded.
By mid-April, Lvova-Belova said she had received about 800 requests from families in Russia wishing to give the children “the comfort of a house and home.” Later, in the Moscow region, a hotline was even set up for such families to call.
Within Russia, these families have become a symbol of Russian charity and compassion. The faces of their adopted children have been shown on state-run TV channels.
By the end of April 2022, the first group of orphans from the Donetsk region left the Rostov and Kursk regions, along with several other groups from temporary accommodation centers in Nizhny Novgorod and Voronezh. Accompanied by officials and TV cameras, 27 children were solemnly handed into the “temporary custody” of Moscow foster families. On May 30, Putin signed a decree instating a simplified citizenship procedure for children from the “Donetsk People’s Republic, the Luhansk People’s Republic and Ukraine.” This was meant to remove bureaucratic obstacles so that orphans could be placed in Russian custody — not temporarily, but permanently.
By July 14, 2022, another 108 children received Russian citizenship and were placed with families in Moscow and in the Moscow, Voronezh, Kaluga and Tula, and Yamalo-Nenets regions.
“This success is difficult to believe, but our country is full of surprises,” Lvova-Belova commented at the time.
Prospective foster parents came to the Rostov and Kursk regions to get to know the children from Donbas or spoke with them on video.
“There are some children… you wouldn’t be ashamed to give to strangers”
“As summer was approaching, we were told that new people would be coming to live at Romashka, and they began to place us with families,” recalled Diana, 13, who together with her brother, Ivan, 17, was evacuated to the Rostov region from Donetsk Boarding School No. 1.
“Children were invited into a special room. First, they were presented with potential parents and allowed to pick three or four to speak with,” she said. “The children were taken all over, some to the farthest regions of Russia. I’m happy for the kids who ended up with families. But it was a shame for kids who went to families where there were already a lot of children. They wanted to take Ivan, but when they found out that he had a sister, they moved on to other children.”
Diana and Ivan are the youngest children of a mother from Donetsk who is serving time for theft in a local penal colony; she’s set to be released in 2025.
The moment when prospective parents seemed interested in her brother was one of the hardest she’d experienced in the last two years, Diana said. She was afraid she would be separated from Ivan.
“In the end, children who the families didn’t want were sent to orphanages,” she said.
Diana and Ivan were sent to Novocherkassk, a city 40 kilometers from Rostov-on-Don, but placed in different facilities: Diana in an orphanage and Ivan in a residential vocational school.
To 16-year-old Ksenya, who was also evacuated from Donetsk Boarding School No. 1, it seemed like sibling groups were more often placed in families than individual children.
“Groups of two or three were placed in families. Potential parents would show them videos and photos of their apartments or their children. And if all agreed, they went. They only had to wait two or three weeks for the documents to be prepared,” she remembered. “My brother was already 18 by that time, and we weren’t offered to any foster parents. But I wouldn’t have gone anyway — another family wouldn’t be my own.”
A family from Podolsk came to Kursk to meet Veronika and her younger sister — students of the Amvrosiivka boarding school — but then decided not to take them.
“We really wanted to go live with that family, but there was some problem — the social workers told us about it,” she said.
Marina, the 17-year-old who struggled with the move to the Kursk region, was also willing to go live with a family, but was skeptical that it would happen. She said that although children could choose whether to meet adoptive parents, caregivers took the children’s personalities into account, giving preference to children they thought would be most appealing to parents.
“The decision was ours, but not really,” Marina said. “There are some children who are well behaved, who you wouldn’t be ashamed to give to strangers, to new people. And there are those who just aren’t very obedient. I knew that even if I asked to join a family, none would take me. But really, wouldn’t anyone from a boarding school want to be placed with a family? I think that many just wanted a change.”
By November 2022, 380 children from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions were already under guardianship in 19 regions of Russia. The government has not updated these statistics since.
Children taken from Ukraine have been placed in institutions in at least 15 regions of Russia.
Within Russia, these families have become a symbol of Russian charity and compassion. The faces of their adopted children have been shown on state-run TV channels. Lvova-Belova, the Russian presidential commissioner for children’s rights, visited some of the families herself and noted that children who’d been traumatized by the war were changing “for the better”: “It’s night and day. Even outwardly, the children are starting to resemble their adoptive parents.” Some families have been allocated new housing to accommodate larger groups — several siblings from Donbas at once — or given household appliances.
But the Office of the Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights has said nothing about the children who were not placed with families. Such children went to boarding schools and family centers all over Russia and were entered into the All-Russian Database of Orphans. There, we found 285 profiles for children from the Donetsk region and confirmed the identity of each.
Kids in the System
The first profiles of evacuated children appeared in the database in early October 2022 — only a week after Russia annexed the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine. Most of the children (263 profiles) were entered into the database in October and November 2022, but 14 more were added in 2023. In half of the cases, a child was identified as without parental care by decision of the court.
Children taken from Ukraine have been placed in institutions in at least 15 regions of Russia. We found the most profiles in the Oryol (38 children), Nizhny Novgorod (28) and Rostov (27) regions. Additionally, 23 children ended up in the Saratov and Bashkortostan regions each, 22 went to the Bryansk region and 20 went to the Kirov region. However, these numbers do not reflect all the Ukrainian children sent to these regions: For example, it is known from local reporting that 66 children were sent to the Oryol region.
The total number of Ukrainian children in the database may be higher: According to Important Stories’s calculations, in 2022, the number of orphans in the database increased significantly, and by summer 2023, there were 2,400 more profiles than the average for the previous six years. However, we cannot say unequivocally that all these additional children were brought from Ukraine.
Currently, at least 187 children from Donbas are still living in Russian orphanages or attending vocational schools there.
Most of the profiles indicate that the children are available for adoption, although Lvova-Belova has repeatedly denied this. At the same time, in spring 2022, when the process of mass evacuation of Ukrainian children started, she argued adoption was the best option for them: “The highest priority path is adoption. But we understand that this will take time and that for now temporary guardianship is needed for children whose relatives might claim them in the future.”
There are at least 20 cases in which the status of Donetsk children’s parents has been changed in absentia by the Russian courts: for example, from limited rights to full deprivation of parental rights.
Profiles for 98 children disappeared from the database as we were preparing this report. By law, children are removed from the database only when they are placed with families, returned to their parents, reach adulthood or die. Important Stories and Verstka know of 17 cases in which children reached the age of 18, and of at least four children who were returned to biological relatives in occupied territories of the Donetsk region — to an older sister, an uncle and grandparents. One child was returned to her mother in Kherson. It is likely that the remaining 76 children were placed in Russian families. According to Lvova-Belova, 380 evacuated children have gone to Russian families, but this refers only to the period from April to October 2022, prior to the Russian annexation of Ukrainian territories. Thus, the total number of Ukrainian children with Russian families may be more than 450.
Currently, at least 187 children from Donbas are still living in Russian orphanages or attending vocational schools there.
‘Moods — steady’
In addition to name, age, health status, eye and hair color, and potential placement type, the orphan profiles give a brief description of each child’s personality.
“Responds satisfactorily to comments and praise.”
“Moods — steady.”
“Emotionally stable, even-tempered.”
“Energetic and tenacious, with a positive outlook on the future.”
“Has independent living and work skills.”
These characteristics describe children who were rushed from their hometowns, spent six months in a temporary accommodation facility and had to learn to live in new orphanages.
Supplementing the profiles, short videos are included for some of the children — it’s thought that the videos help them find foster families more quickly. In such videos, children talk about themselves with an adult who is off-camera — but rarely can one learn from these monologues about school grades and clubs what really excites a child.
The videos don’t reveal that the well-dressed Ukrainian children in the frame were recently taken from a war zone, separated from their friends and caretakers, and have already changed cities several times.
“I know how to make a poster and draw,” 14-year-old Masha says in a video, in the database of orphans for the Kirov region. “I love puzzles and mosaics. I can dust, wash floors, wash dishes and sweep.” For a year now she has been apart from her younger sisters, who were sent to an orphanage in another region.
“I’d like to travel — to Italy or somewhere,” says 15-year-old Arina in another video. “I know how to clean, wash floors, dust. I’m good at cooking rice and buckwheat kasha.” When the video was filmed, she’d been living in the Oryol region for just a month. Soon after, she was featured on local TV thanking Oryol business owners for some new upholstered furniture: After the children’s arrival from Amvrosiivka, they’d donated six sofas to the boarding school.
The children don’t know why they were sent to different regions and boarding schools — their teachers received lists and simply read out their assignments, they say.
Boarding Schools: ‘At first we liked it, then we didn’t’
“Green shirt, jacket, beret,” recited 16-year-old Ksenya, a former student of a Donetsk boarding school. Now she is a member of a cadet class in the village of Belogornoye, in the Saratov region. “Every Monday we line up and sing the Russian national anthem.”
The practice of training cadets for possible military service at this rural school began in 2016, inaugurated on the anniversary of the village and region by the initiative of Nikolai Pankov, a State Duma deputy and a member of the United Russia party. The program received funding from the chairman of the State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, who grew up in Belogornoye and provides regular assistance to the school. After the opening of the cadet program, an athletic obstacle course was installed in the yard. Not just orphans study at the institution — 85 out of 121 students are “house children,” or children who live in a home.
Together with local peers, orphans from Donbas participate in conversations about the homeland, here understood to be Russia, and in campaigns to support soldiers fighting for Russia in Ukraine.
Ksenya described the strict discipline at this school where she and other children from Donetsk were sent: If a cadet behaves badly at school, they may have to appear before a teachers’ council. In severe cases, the offender may be “registered” in the village. If violations occur during free time — that is, at the orphanage itself — then mobile phones may be confiscated for several days, or a child may be prohibited from leaving the grounds.
“Usually, we need written permission to leave the boarding school,” Ksenya said. “The most important thing is not to miss breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner or other routine events. If we do, we are punished.”
Upon entering the cadet program, Donetsk children took an oath to the Russian military. Among the extracurricular activities Ksenya mentioned are the “I Am a Patriot” club and military drills and songs. Over the course of a year and a half, the children were visited several times by soldiers in the Russian army fighting in Ukraine. One gave the school a tactical first-aid kit, another “fragments of enemy shells.” And in February 2024, a “museum of the special military operation” was opened at the school.
After a year as a cadet, Ksenya said, she understood that students were gradually being “prepared for military service”: “Most of the children plan to study at the military academy in Volsk. I want to be a lawyer, but so far I haven’t found any place to study law nearby. Perhaps I’ll go into the military, too. As a child from the DPR, there would be benefits.”
Ksenya said she had more freedom in the Donetsk boarding school than she does in the cadet program because she could go for more walks in the city and see friends. And there were no bans on long nails or “different hairstyles.” But she has tried to remain circumspect about the changes because she has no other option until she graduates from the cadet school: “At first we liked it here, then we didn’t, but now we don’t care.”
Another institution of note is the Chicherin Center in the village of Karaul, in the Tambov region. This is a small-scale boarding school with about 30 students, under the patronage of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Several children from Horlivka, in Donetsk, ended up there.
In February 2024, its students met with Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov in Moscow and invited him to visit them. A schoolgirl from the Donetsk region presented a painting to him as a gift. Judging by the institution’s social media, its children participate in patriotic extracurricular activities every week, from “lessons in courage” about Russian commanders to “Russia Is My Motherland” reading competitions and virtual diplomatic receptions.
On Feb. 8, 2024, during the Russian holiday Young Anti-Fascist Hero’s Day, Ukrainian orphans in military caps participated in a treasure hunt called “Roads Scorched by War.” They put together an aid package for a make-believe front and sang war songs. And on Feb. 10, Diplomats’ Day, two girls from the Donetsk region recited little poems against the backdrop of the Russian flag, congratulating those whose work it is “to prevent war.”
The rest of the boarding schools where Donetsk children ended up are not fundamentally different from other schools across contemporary Russia and occupied Ukraine. Together with local peers, orphans from Donbas participate in conversations about the homeland, here understood to be Russia, and in campaigns to support soldiers fighting for Russia in Ukraine — this goes on in almost every region of Russia.
In the opinions of boarding school staff, Ukrainian children — new citizens of Russia — are especially interested in these activities because they’ve seen the fighting with their own eyes.
“We know how difficult and scary things are for you all. But you are our Russian brothers and sisters, and we will never abandon you to be torn to pieces by the enemy. My name is Tatyana M. and I now live in Russia, though I’m originally from Makiivka.”
So wrote one new student of a boarding school for orphans in the Russian city of Tolyatti in a letter to peers in Donetsk and Luhansk. According to the institution’s director, children use “every free evening” to write such letters.
“The students are always talking about the importance and responsibility of soldiers and officers in the special military operation,” she said. “And in order to help the soldiers, to contribute to the victory, children draw and make good luck charms for them, and weave them camouflage nets. Both staff and students try to help the fighters and protect them, even in some small way.”
‘They even called us Ukrainians’
The fact that these children have received Russian citizenship and passports does not protect them from bullying. In several boarding schools, local children reacted poorly to the newcomers studying with them.
“They told us we were people of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Ukrainians, and that we’d started it all,” said Marina, from the Amvrosiivka boarding school, who ended up in Kursk. “I tried to explain that I was in no way responsible for the fighting.” She said she encountered more conflicts at the vocational school where she was later sent to study construction work.
“In the beginning, they were rude and even called us Ukrainians,” said Ksenya, the student in the cadet program. “But now everything is different, and no one insults us or calls us non-Russians. A psychologist brought us together to talk, and we expressed our different viewpoints. I said, for example, that someone’s attitude toward a person shouldn’t depend on their nationality.”
“It didn’t happen often, but some children called us ‘dillweeds’ (pejorative slang for Ukrainians). They asked why we’d come,” said Alyona Ovcharenko, who together with her twin sister and younger brother was moved from a Rostov temporary accommodation center to an orphanage in Bashkortostan.
Recently, Alyona and her siblings were placed with a family. She remembered meeting her future adoptive mother: “They said that I would have my own room, that no one would hurt me, that they’d help, feed and love me.” After a conditional transfer (“guest mode”), the children agreed to stay.
‘And DPR kids are the children of famous ballerinas?’
At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Lvova-Belova, Russia’s presidential commissioner for children’s rights, spoke regularly with regional officials about the evacuation of children from occupied territories. Children were handed over to new adoptive parents on camera, given gifts and visited by celebrities.
Two years later, the authorities stopped publicly reporting the placement of such children with families and began to publicize cases of their return to Ukraine. Foster parents who wanted to take in children from Donbas could no longer find any. Likely, this change was precipitated by an arrest warrant the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued for Putin and Lvova-Belova in connection with the evacuation of Ukrainian children.
Some foster parents thought they could get “problem-free” children from prosperous families who had lost their parents. But many of the children evacuated from Ukraine are boarding school students with the same problems as Russian orphans.
“Where are all the orphans from Donetsk and Luhansk?” someone wrote in a chat group for foster parents. “On TV you see so many stories about abandoned orphans, both in Russia and Ukraine. I don’t understand where they’re being sent.”
“All the kids from over there have already been identified and assigned,” another member of the group wrote. “There are none left. That’s what I was told when I asked.”
Difficulties transferring children to families have also been reported by the boarding schools where the evacuated children are being raised.
“At first we went to Rostov-on-Don, bringing 30 children with us,” reported a boarding school in the village of Zolino, in the Nizhny Novgorod region. “Four went to families, and 26 still live with us. At the beginning, when the kids first came, there were lots of takers. Four were placed with families, but there are no prospects for the rest.”
When asked why it’s difficult to place children in families, an employee of the boarding school responded: “Foster parents want girls and little kids. But all of mine are older; the little ones were taken first. We have two kids in first grade, but 12 in ninth. Any child, no matter where he’s from — the DPR or elsewhere — is much more difficult at that age. Girls from the first, second and fourth grades were taken right away. But the bigger boys and teenagers always stay.”
The profiles of evacuated children seen by Important Stories and Verstka confirm that mostly older children remain in the system. Ninety percent of the children currently in the database are over 10 years old, and all the children under five have already been placed with families.
According to one employee of the Zolino boarding school, most of the family groups that get stuck in institutions are of three siblings or more, since not many prospective parents are willing to adopt several children at once. In addition, some children maintain contact with relatives in the occupied territories, which can scare off potential guardians.
“People understand very well that most children maintain some kind of relationship with their relatives back in Ukraine — despite the fact that even before the evacuation, they lived in boarding schools,” the employee said. “I have grandmothers, sisters and so on beginning to show up one after another. Their regions are recovering, and life is returning to normal.” But despite the existence of relatives who may be ready to take the children, they still end up in the database.
Potential adoptive parents have also expressed concerns about children’s unclear status and their connections with relatives. “Children from the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) and DPR appear in the database across different regions,” a member of one adoptive parents’ group wrote in a group chat. “But their statuses are different there, and at any moment a relative could show up in Ukraine, and you’d have to give the child back.”
Another prospective parent weighed in: “There are a lot of serious problems there, and the risk of a return is many times higher. Take off the rose-colored glasses. You could ruin your own life, and a child’s life that’s already been ruined.”
Some foster parents thought they could get “problem-free” children from prosperous families who had lost their parents. But many of the children evacuated from Ukraine are boarding school students with the same problems as Russian orphans. “Essentially it’s the same story: dad unknown, mom DPRD — deprived of parental rights for drunkenness,” one foster parent wrote. “They’re the same ‘social orphans,’ only with an unclear legal status. If you want to help a child from the DPR in the hope of finding one from a normal family where the parents were killed rather than drinking themselves to death, think again.”
“A friend said to me: Why get the kid of a drunk or a thief when you could get one from the DPR?” another prospective parent commented.
They received the following answer: “And DPR kids are the children of famous ballerinas? No, everything’s the same. Alcohol, drugs and all. Just more hassle with documents.”
The Families: ‘Since you’re doing fine, stop calling’
Irina, a resident of Bryansk (Eds: The name of the city has been changed), applied to be a guardian right after the war began. At the time, prospective adoptive parents were asked to give their information in case children were brought to the region from Donbas.
“It was mostly siblings or big groups, and we couldn’t take that many,” Irina said. “But I got excited about the idea and continued to look for a child. I found two or three girls in the Kirov region and called the regional authority. I never expected that the child I’d like best would be from the DPR.”
“Why get close to someone when you’re only going to separate?” Katya once blurted out.
Irina went to the Kirov region to meet this girl — 12-year-old Katya — and took her on vacation.
“She was already a pre-teen, and we needed to find things to talk about,” Irina remembered. “So I showed her pictures and said, ‘You’ll have a sister and two brothers. A dog and a cat.’ I think that won her over since it turned out she loved animals, and we have a cute dog.”
Irina said that right after they met, Katya started calling her and her husband “Mom and Dad.” They weren’t sure if this was a good thing.
But while they were discussing custody, Katya asked, “Will I be allowed to speak with my family?” This, according to Irina, was her condition.
Back in Donetsk, the girl had a biological father who’d been deprived of parental rights, and an older brother in the army.
“Her father must have taken offense when Katya joined our family. He told her, ‘Since you’re doing fine, stop calling.’ But recently they’ve started communicating again,” Irina said. “Katya likes to be alone when she talks to him, goes into her bedroom or the kitchen. But I can hear that his tone has improved. And her older brother even plans to visit, though he can’t so long as he’s fighting.”
While Katya was settling into her new family, her adoptive parents began to grapple with bureaucratic issues that are still unresolved.
“Her birth certificate is from the DPR, which makes it hard even to buy train tickets,” Irina said. “It’s considered a foreign document and has to be shown at the ticket office. Child support from her biological parents has also been difficult to arrange — her father has been notified but doesn’t yet have the special account number that’s needed. What’s more, Katya’s mother died recently, according to her father. I want to apply for survivor benefits on her behalf, but I can’t do that either — missing information.”
Simultaneously, institutions that house evacuated children claim their documents are all in order. “They have DPR documents; no one has Ukrainian ones,” the Zolino boarding school said. “There’s absolutely no problem. The territories now belong to Russia, and the children are exactly like everybody else. It’s just like everywhere else, no different.”
In Bryansk, Katya took up singing and joined the Movement of the First, a Russian youth organization created by Putin in 2022 to instill traditional values in teenagers. Recently she was chosen as the captain for a showcase of military drills and songs at her school. Irina said that although Katya is an energetic child, the moves have taken a toll on her.
“She’s been sick all year. Apparently, her nervous system has suffered,” Irina said. “In the beginning, she also struggled at school. Some children called her names and insulted her when she told them she was from Donetsk. They just don’t understand; for them it’s still Ukraine. We ended up moving her to another school.”
Irina said that all the hellos and goodbyes with various people have damaged the child. “Why get close to someone when you’re only going to separate?” Katya once blurted out.
Irina said that Katya’s online communication with friends from the Donetsk region is dwindling because “the friendships are losing their foundation.”
‘Are they still firing in the city of M.?’
In February 2022, seven-year-old Sasha was evacuated to the Rostov region from a Donetsk community center. This was a shelter where children in difficult situations went temporarily to await their fates — they might be taken to a boarding school, placed in foster care or returned to their parents.
Judging by photographs from the Donetsk shelter, Sasha arrived there shortly before the evacuation; prior to that, he’d lived with his own family. By law, parents whose children are taken by the state are given time to reform and get them back. However, according to the director of the Donetsk center where Sasha lived before the evacuation, only five percent of birth parents manage to get their children back. We were not able to determine what this process might look like for a child evacuated to Russia shortly after being taken from his parents.
In the fall of 2022, Sasha was moved again, from the Rostov region to an orphanage in central Russia. But his profile did not appear in the orphan database until much later. Only in February 2023 did a Russian court confirm the “fact of absence” with regard to his birth mother, indicating that she could not be found but still retains her parental rights. (Eds: This phrase indicates that the mother cannot be found but is not deprived of parental rights.) Thus, at the time he was taken to Russia in early 2022, he most likely was not legally classified as an orphan.
In summer 2023, a woman from the region where Sasha had ended up “dashed” over to meet him, according to a post in an adoptive parents’ group. Only on that day did she learn that he was from “the combat zone.” “How are children from the DPR and LPR adapting?” she asked the adoptive parents’ group.
Sasha had been with the family for six months when the child’s floodgates opened during the winter holidays: “He told us how they’d gone to sleep there, in his homeland, with ‘whistling’ outside. That it was dangerous to be near the windows, that shell fragments would land in their home. About looting and much more.” The woman listed the child’s manifested emotions, comparing them to “frozen rain.”
She added that her brother recently returned “from a business trip in the area of the special military operation” and that upon meeting him, Sasha immediately asked a question that “made my hair stand on end”: “Are they still shooting in the city of M.?” We were unable to determine which city the adoptive mother had in mind — Mariupol, Makiivka or somewhere else.
‘My uncle realized after a while that I wasn’t with my family and had been taken away’
Sometimes the children taken from the Donetsk region return to their relatives and are removed from the orphan database.
Diana and Ivan, the teenagers whose mother is serving time for theft, were taken home by their older sister in December 2022. She came to get them in Novocherkassk, a city in the Rostov region of Russia.
“Vanya knew that I was working on the guardianship paperwork, but we kept it from Diana for a long time so that she wouldn’t worry or expect anything,” the older sister said. “And then finally we were together in Novocherkassk. I told them, ‘Tomorrow, or the day after, we’ll go home.’”
“When I saw my sister, I ran to her and almost knocked her over — I was so happy,” Diana recalled.
In order to come get her siblings, the older sister had applied to the Novocherkassk authority, where the teenagers were registered as orphans. She now has to submit new paperwork to secure guardianship in Donetsk.
“At the border of the Rostov region and the DPR, questions arose about the documents attesting that I was the children’s guardian — they suspected the documents might be fake,” the older sister said. “So I had to call Novocherkassk and have them confirm everything.”
Back at home, Vitya said he plans to use the experience he gained in Russia — particularly in his law classes — to help Donetsk reshape its laws according to the Russian system.
“The problem is that I’m a Russian citizen now,” said Viktor, another teenager who returned home to Donetsk from Russia’s Samara region. He said that from what he understands, the relative he now lives with was required to take certain guardianship courses. Viktor said he does not know exactly how these bureaucratic issues were resolved, but that it was difficult.
Vitya was brought to Russia after the evacuation of a Donetsk social center that sheltered children in difficult situations. From the Rostov region, he was sent to an orphanage in the Samara region, where the teenager said he “felt great.”
Vitya was presented with a Russian passport in a beautiful assembly hall and swore the oath of citizenship onstage. In his free time, he took courses in carpentry, law, cooking, fabric cutting and sewing. On Victory Day, he took part in a flag show, carrying the Russian tricolor through the city square.
But when an uncle from Donetsk contacted him and offered him guardianship, Vitya “became hopeful” and agreed.
“My uncle realized after a while that I wasn’t with my family and had been taken away,” Vitya said. “And I thought I’d go back and live with my family and return to my roots. After all, my real homeland is there. I’ve spent much more time there than any place abroad.”
Back at home, Vitya said he plans to use the experience he gained in Russia — particularly in his law classes — to help Donetsk reshape its laws according to the Russian system.
In the two years he spent in Russia, he said his happiest moments were taking lessons on how to interview people or make video footage at a children’s television studio and joining the Combat Crew Border Guards, a military patriotic club. On Vitya’s page on VKontakte, a Russian social media network, there are several pictures of him in military uniform, wearing a bulletproof vest with the letter V — a Russian military symbol — and holding a submachine gun.
‘There are no “children of the Donbas” — these are Ukrainian children’
Russian authorities report that since February 2022, 64 children have returned to relatives in Ukraine. Most were separated from their families by the war and were not raised in orphanages.
Dmitry Lubinets, the Ukrainian parliamentary commissioner for human rights, told us that returning all evacuated children — including those from orphanages and boarding schools — is a priority, although Ukraine has not had complete information about the children from the Luhansk and Donetsk regions since 2014.
“For Ukraine there are no ‘children of the Donbas’ — these are Ukrainian children,” he said. “Russia does not provide information about children evacuated or forcibly displaced from any of these territories and blocks access not only to Ukraine but also to international organizations.”
Lubinets did not answer the question of how exactly children raised in institutions in the occupied territories and then taken to Russia might be returned to Ukraine.
At the time this text was published, Lvova-Belova, the Russian presidential commissioner for children’s rights, had not responded to our questions.
‘Your mama’s eyes, how you’ve grown’
As Donetsk children settle in Russia, their relatives, family friends, former teachers and caretakers — and sometimes even their parents — watch from a distance. They leave comments on the children’s photographs on social media: “Your mama’s eyes, how you’ve grown”; “Thinking of you, kids, and Dad is too, hi to all”; “I love you very much, my little niece”; “Too much of a big shot now to wish your grandfather happy birthday?”
“It’s hard that the children are so far away,” said Yekaterina, the aunt of twin girls living with a foster family in Bashkortostan. “But after their father’s death, they really wanted to live with a family. They’re used to it now, and I’m happy for them. The only things they miss are our salo and borscht; over there, the borscht is made from sauerkraut. I’m hopeful that they’ll come back when they’re older. But I think they have their eye on Moscow.”
Some of the evacuated children imagine returning not only to Donetsk but to their families — even when their parents have been deprived of parental rights.
In fall 2022, Oleg, a teenager from Donetsk, ended up in the Russian Ryazan region with his sister. He said he plans to stay there. He is studying in a vocational program of the Ministry of Emergency Situations and plans to join the waitlist for an apartment. In the small town of Rybny, where he first lived after the evacuation, housing for orphans could be obtained quickly, but in Ryazan, it will take a couple of years. But Oleg said he is willing to wait.
Now in Kursk, Marina, from the Amvrosiivka boarding school, will soon be 18, too. But she has other plans — to return home with a group of her classmates.
“When I turn 18, I’m getting out of here. I’m going to Amvrosiivka. I’ll go back to my boarding school with flowers for my caretaker, director and assistant director. … I’ll live there,” she dreamed. “Our assistant director is a wonderful person. Talking to her is as good as taking medicine. She says to me: ‘We can do it, we’ll succeed, we’ll definitely be together soon. That’s life, and other things lie ahead for you. That’s life, you have to persist and try to move forward.’”
Marina said she hopes that very soon, civilians will stop “suffering as a result of politics.” She said she doesn’t understand how loved ones can break ties in wartime, but she also noted that “Russia always wins.”
“When we came here, we attended different events, and now we know things like who our president is and what Russia is. We know we must defend our homeland, no matter what. When people tell me I lived in Ukraine before, I correct them and say, ‘I lived in the DPR.’ They try to insult me even though I was born in Mariupol. I like Russia better. Our people, Russians, are very strong.”
Some of the evacuated children imagine returning not only to Donetsk but to their families — even when their parents have been deprived of parental rights.
“It’s very boring here,” said 14-year-old Taisiya. “I’m pretty unhappy. OK, good night. I’ve got to turn my phone in now.”
She lives in a boarding school in central Russia with her younger sister, Rita. Their older sister was sent to live in a different region. “I don’t know why they separated us,” Taisiya said, explaining that this had happened once before, when they were first taken from their family in Donetsk.
Child protection authorities initially apprehended their mother when Taisiya was not taken to the hospital after being severely burned at home.
“Mom and I explained everything in court,” she recalled. “And a month later, they came to check on us. My mother had already started drinking by that time. The house was a mess, with vodka bottles everywhere. They told her, ‘Your children could be harmed.’ Then these two ladies came and took my younger sister and me to a boarding school in Uglegorsk. Our older sister was taken, too, but to a different boarding school. I asked why we couldn’t be together and was told, ‘It’s not possible.’ And then the war started, and again we were scattered, who knows where.”
A video about the sisters, filmed at their boarding school, begins with a question about their dreams.
“I dream about my mother,” says the youngest, Rita.
“And I dream that the war will end quickly,” Taisiya says.
In Uglegorsk, Taisiya said she hoped that she’d be back with her family soon. Later, the girls’ mother admitted that she had the chance to get them back but lost it when she kept drinking.
“I said, ‘Mom, why’d you mess it up?’” Taisiya recalled. “‘This is all your fault. Because of you we ended up in a boarding school.’ She didn’t respond.”
Taisiya and Rita have been in a Russian orphanage for more than a year now. The institution’s director said that the “special military operation” is upsetting and takes a toll on everyone, but that “the kids are happy and content.”
At the orphanage, Taisiya excels in athletics and embroidery. The director noted that in their sewing circle, Taisiya’s stitching and needlework are “a sight for sore eyes,” and expressed hope that “the two angels will find a family.”
But Taisiya said she still considers her life in Russia temporary: “I want to go home,” she wrote. She described her relatives in Donetsk, listing her mother, father, uncle and grandmother by name. However, recently she has been unable to reach them by phone: “The connection has been bad.”
Taisiya said she believes that her mother is sorry for everything and that things could still take a turn.
“She promised to come get us. But with the war, nothing ever seems to work out.”
This article was originally published by Verstka.Media in April 2024. It has been edited and translated.
✺ Published in “Issue 17: Land” of The Dial
