Independent monitors have verified the mass transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia. Kyiv’s figures, officials say, are drawn from documented cases and closely match estimates from the United Nations and other international bodies.
Russian state media have amplified Vladimir Putin’s claim that Kyiv is “inflating” the number of minors taken to Russia, with the Kremlin leader insisting that “it turned out there aren’t that many children.”
The claim is demonstrably false, contradicted by findings from a wide range of international organizations.
The UN, Human Rights Watch, OSCE, Amnesty International, the Institute for the Study of War and others have documented large-scale instances of Ukrainian children being taken without parental consent. While the exact figure remains elusive—given limited access to occupied territories and Moscow’s refusal to provide reliable data—researchers say the number is in the hundreds of thousands. Russian authorities frequently change the children’s names and citizenship records, further obscuring the scale. Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab has compiled a database of more than 30,000 abducted children from over 100 locations.
Ukraine’s Bring Kids Back UA initiative is also tracking minors taken by Russia. Its database lists 19,546 children, of whom 1,480 have been returned from deportation or forced relocation.
Moscow officials and state media have openly acknowledged the transfer of Ukrainian children to Russian families. Children’s rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova has said in interviews that she personally “adopted” a child from Donbas — an act that constitutes a direct breach of the Geneva Convention. She has also boasted publicly of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children in Russia, the removal of orphans to Russian territory, their placement in families, and their acquisition of Russian citizenship.
In March 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova over the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children.
Moscow’s claim that Kyiv is inflating the figures is part of a broader effort to reframe the narrative — shifting attention from the war crime itself to a dispute over statistics. But independently verified evidence shows the deportations are large-scale, systematic, and well documented.
StopFake has previously debunked Kremlin assertions that Ukraine fabricated reports of Russia abducting 20,000 children.
