Just before the full-scale invasion, a friend of mine made a decision that was supposed to protect her younger child, but almost led to tragedy. Fearing an attack on Kyiv, she took the child to her family in Chernihiv. No one at the time – neither Ukrainian intelligence nor most Western analysts – expected the Russian offensive to strike with such force from the north as well. Instead of a safe haven, the child ended up in a shadow zone, cut off from his mother by the front line.
The situation became dramatic. The desperate woman was ready to make a frantic journey through Belarus and then through Russia itself to enter the occupied territories from the other side. She was fully aware that she was risking her life, but her fear of losing her child was stronger. She was afraid not only of accidental death in the crossfire. She was afraid of something worse – that her child would be abducted. Ukrainians remembered the lesson of 2014 very well, knowing that children were disappearing in Donbas, taken deep into Russia under the pretext of “vacations” or “medical treatment.”
In this particular case, the story had a happy ending. It turned out that the unit of the “second army of the world” stationed there was in fact a motley crew of stragglers who cared only about profit. The child was treated like living merchandise, a hostage. The family managed to reach the Russian soldiers and simply buy the child back. Money prevailed over ideology, and the child returned home.
However, thousands of others were not so lucky. Today, this story serves as a lens through which I focus on one of the most terrifying aspects of this war – the systematic theft of children. Interestingly, it was this practice that became the only real stumbling block for Vladimir Putin in the international legal arena. It was for kidnapping children that the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for him.
In theory, Putin is being prosecuted. In practice, however, we see how illusory this responsibility becomes when confronted with geopolitical cynicism. The symbolic and final collapse of the myth of international justice took place this year in Alaska. It was there, on American soil, that Vladimir Putin was welcomed on the red carpet by Donald Trump. The man wanted on an arrest warrant for kidnapping children was not only not arrested, but was treated as an equal partner, even an ally in the “new deal.” Seeing these handshakes, hearing the paeans to the Russian dictator proclaimed by Trump’s associates or Viktor Orbán, the world received a clear signal: the arrest warrant from The Hague is just a piece of paper. The world, tired of war, turned a blind eye to the fact that it was talking to a kidnapper, thereby legitimizing his crimes.
Meanwhile, what Russia is doing is not chaotic warfare. It is precise social engineering aimed at creating new janissaries. This term is not journalistic hyperbole. The Ottoman Empire kidnapped Christian boys to raise them as fanatical soldiers of the sultan, who in time became the greatest threat to their former compatriots. Putin is doing exactly the same thing, only on an industrial scale and using modern methods of brainwashing.
Children taken from Mariupol, Kherson, or Luhansk are not simply placed with Russian families to live in peace. They are thrown into the gears of an indoctrination machine. Their names are changed, their dates of birth are falsified, and their memories of their parents are erased. In schools in the occupied territories and in Russia itself, they are taught to hate Ukraine, calling their homeland a “hotbed of Nazism.”
A key tool in this process is the “Yunarmiya” – a militarized youth organization that is the modern incarnation of the Hitlerjugend. Children are dressed in uniforms, given weapons, and taught to march to the rhythm of imperial songs. The goal is clear: in five or ten years, these children, now grown men, are to return to Ukraine. Not as citizens, but as soldiers of the Russian army.
This is a long-term plan. Russia, struggling with a demographic disaster, treats Ukrainian children as a resource. But it is not just about labor. It is about breeding the perfect soldier – one who has no roots, no identity other than that given to him by the state, and who hates the enemies designated by the Kremlin.
Therefore, the issue of returning these children is not just a humanitarian or sentimental matter. It is a matter of national security for Ukraine, Poland, and all of Europe. If we allow Russia to complete this process, in a decade there will be legions of Russian-speaking Janissaries with Ukrainian DNA standing at our border, ready to kill in the name of the tsar who stole their lives. The world’s passivity towards this process, symbolized by Putin’s impunity as he travels, is not only a crime. It is suicide.
PB
