On 12 February 2025, we organised a screening of “Hearing Them Out: Returned Children of Ukraine”. Directed by Tetiana Khodakivska and supported by the Prague Civil Society Centre, this short film documents the stories of 72 rescued children and reveals, in their own words, the horrors they endured.
The screening was followed by a panel debate with Tetiana Khodakivska, the director, Kateryna Rashevska, a legal expert from Regional Center for Human Rights and a co-author of several submissions to the International Criminal Court, and Alina Chubko, our Senior Programme Officer for Ukraine.
“Russia operates 67 ‘re-education camps’ on its own territory, but also 13 institutions in occupied regions of Ukraine and 18 in Belarus,” said Ms. Rashevska during the debate. “Since 2024, we have documented cases of Ukrainian children from Luhansk and Donetsk being transferred to China and India, as well as Kazakhstan and Russian-occupied territory of Georgia, Abkhazia,” she added. Ms. Khodakivska noted that deported Ukrainian children are often told by Russian authorities that their parents had abandoned them. “They hear: ‘your parents don’t want you, your country left you. You have a bright future in Russia. We’ll give you money, a passport, a university education’. Many children gradually start to believe this,” the director noted.
At least 19,546 Ukrainian children have been forcefully deported or unlawfully relocated to Russia and Russian-controlled territories since February 2022. So far, only 388 of these Ukrainian children have been rescued and brought back home, according to the Ukrainian project Children of War.