As our own children return to school, kidnapped Ukrainian children are being indoctrinated in Russian imperialist ideology and auctioned off by their Russian captors. This is not the chaos of war but a deliberate campaign to erase Ukraine’s future – its children.
Tens of thousands of children have been ripped from their families, and now live under a constant shadow of fear. Deprived of food, medicine and clothing, they are subjected to military drills, abuse and humiliation while being denied and punished for use of their own language, their own names and if they dare to invoke the memory of their family and loved ones. In Crimea, the so-called “summer camps” are not places of rest but of cultural annihilation – a war crime and form of genocide.
Some of the abducted children have even been found in online catalogues, sorted by eye colour, hair colour, or so-called character traits such as “obedient” or “calm”. Like objects in a marketplace, their humanity is reduced to labels ready for Russian families seeking social capital with the Kremlin to adopt them in a practice worthy of Stalinist ideals.
The Kremlin dares to celebrate their actions as “saving” Ukrainian children. This is no rescue; it is brutal social conditioning – moulding a stolen Ukrainian generation to serve as Russia’s future soldiers, as Putin’s cannon fodder against their own people.
On visits to Ukraine since Putin’s full-scale illegal invasion, I have heard first hand the testimonies of incredibly brave men and women who infiltrate Russia and rescue Ukraine’s children, bringing them home to their country and families. Of grandmothers traversing national borders to rescue their grandchildren, and Save Ukraine is one such incredible organisation who have brought hundreds home to safety.
But I’ve also heard the stories of children kidnapped over three years ago, whose indoctrination and torture has been so horrifyingly effective that when rescues have been attempted, the children have refused to come home. Telling their rescuers that Ukraine is not a country, that their parents abandoned them to the Russian military, and that they want to live in Russia under Putin’s glorious rule.
These testimonies are impossible to forget. The cruelty and horror as a parent, to imagine children saying these words, and their parents hearing them re-told, will never desert me. It’s why the Express is right to campaign to raise the issue as part of its Return the Stolen Children Crusade.
Freedom is never free. Every Ukrainian knows the cost of refusing to allow imperialism and tyranny to conquer. When Trump and world leaders speak of negotiations with “territorial compromises”, we must be honest about the human cost.
To concede land is not simply to surrender territory. Both words are so distanced from what land truly represents. It is to abandon the people who live there to the very people who deny the very existence and identity of the people of Ukraine. Condemning children to captivity, indoctrination and the erasure of their identity. Every inch of Ukrainian land is home to a Ukrainian family, with their own story and hopes for a future free from Russian aggression.
Thanks to the rank glorification by the Kremlin of the abduction of Ukrainian children, the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and his officials. But warrants alone are meaningless unless the world gives them force. Flying around the world and being greeted with a hand on heart by world leaders in the last week turned my stomach. Arrest warrants must be matched by political will, with pressure, sanctions and international isolation, to seek justice and maximise pressure on those responsible for abuses against children. It is long overdue, but I want to see Trump and Starmer act.
We need concerted action, an economic Ramstein equivalent to the allied military effort, more sanctions and travel bans – where are Ukraine’s children in the words and acts of world leaders?
Putin demonstrates neither contrition nor recognition of the horror he has unleashed. Instead, he appears hand in hand with his “dear friend” Xi Jinping to review the masses of goose-stepping soldiers treading the very ground in Tiananmen where Chinese students were massacred in 1989. That spectacle matters. It sends a signal: dictators believe they are untouchable. Just as Xi has torn Uyghur and Tibetan children from their parents apart, stripping them of their cultures, languages, names and families, so too does Putin think he can steal Ukrainian children without consequence.
Genocide it seems, attracts a sharing of best practice.
Ukrainian children are the future of their nation, their innocence inspires the stoic defenders whose courage holds back the invaders – the world shames itself if we sit by in silence as children are abandoned, broken down and forcibly reshaped into another cog in Putin’s imperial war machine.
Alicia Kearns is Conservative MP for Rutland and Stamford and Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Hostage Taking