Russia’s Filtration System Facilitates Deportation of Ukrainian Children
Russia’s Filtration System Facilitates Deportation of Ukrainian Children
Executive Summary:
- The Kremlin has returned only a small share of the Ukrainian children it transferred to Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine has documented more than 20,000 forced transfers of children, only 2,404 of which have been returned.
- Forcibly separating children from their parents during filtration (фильтрация, fil’tratsiia)— Russia’s compulsory security screening of Ukrainian civilians in occupied territories—is one of six major mechanisms Russia has used to deport Ukrainian children to Russia, illustrating the coercive nature of separations and deportations.
- Russia uses deported Ukrainian children to address Russia’s demographic decline and replenish its future military ranks. Nearly 47,000 Ukrainian children received Russian citizenship between April 2022 and June 2023.
- The separation of children from their parents in an already traumatic environment inflicts severe psychological harm, leaving many with long-term emotional and developmental consequences.
Only 2,404 of the over 20,000 Ukrainian children whose forced transfers to Russia have been documented by Ukrainian authorities had been returned as of July 28 (Children of War, accessed July 28). Russian officials insist they are “saving” Ukrainian children. In June 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, “We took them out of the conflict area, saving their lives and health … Nobody was going to separate anyone, any children, from their families” (TASS, June 17, 2023).
Evidence gathered by The Reckoning Project (TRP)—a team of journalists and lawyers documenting, publicizing, and helping build cases of atrocity crimes, which these authors work for—challenges this Kremlin narrative. In a January submission to several UN special rapporteurs, TRP documented how arbitrary detention, torture, and intimidation by Russian forces compelled civilians to leave occupied Ukrainian territory, violating human rights laws, including Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits the deportation or forcible transfers of protected persons “from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not … regardless of their motive” (Geneva Conventions of 1949, accessed July 30).
Article 78 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions specifically prohibits evacuating children in occupied territory abroad except temporarily for compelling reasons relating to health or other medical treatment, and ordinarily with the written consent of their parents or legal guardians. Russian practices involving the transfer of Ukrainian children clearly violate these protections (TRP, January 2026; Geneva Conventions of 1949, accessed July 28).
In March, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine concluded that Russia’s deportation and forcible transfer of Ukrainian children constitute crimes against humanity. According to the report, the removal of Ukrainian children is part of a carefully planned and systematically implemented policy, directed at the highest level of the Russian state (UN, March 12).
Ukrainian officials have documented six main methods by which Russia moves children from the occupied territories of Ukraine to Russia. Children are moved with their parents or guardians; from institutions for children without parental care; through camps and sanatoriums, often under nominal parental consent obtained through coercion or misinformation; under the guise of medical treatment; and after being separated from their parents during filtration (фильтрация, fil’tratsiia) or their parents’ death or detention (Ukraine’s Office of the Ombudsman, accessed July 20). [1]
Although separations during filtration or after parents’ death or detention account for only a small share of documented cases, they are especially revealing. Filtration is a compulsory security screening system imposed in occupied territories, during which Ukrainian civilians are sometimes detained for periods ranging from several hours to almost a month. Filtration subjects these civilians to biometric data collection, interrogation, body searches, inspections of phones and personal belongings, and, in many cases, violence and arbitrary detentions (Human Rights Watch, September 1, 2022). Separations during this process undermine Russia’s claim that it is “saving” children, since these children were already fleeing the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine with their families. They are also among the most traumatic cases for children, as they abruptly lose their families amid war and displacement.
The Reckoning Project report, Your Mum Stays, and You will Come with Us, examines 18 such cases, documenting how Russian authorities separated Ukrainian children during filtration (TRP, accessed on July 20). One case involved a father from Mariupol who was separated from his three children in April 2022. They had been hiding in the basement of a Mariupol hospital when soldiers of the self-proclaimed, Russia-controlled Donetsk People’s Republic ordered everyone to go with them. At a filtration post in Bezimenne, Russian soldiers noticed that the father’s documents showed that he was registered with a military unit in Lviv and took him for interrogation. In a June 2022 interview, the father said, “[The soldiers] said they wanted me to explain my documents. I told them that I could not leave my children alone. They replied, ‘Find someone you know so your children can stay with them’” (Public Interest Journalism Lab’s Interview, June 2022). After waiting with his children for four hours, he was forced to send them onto a bus. “I told them to obey the woman [in charge], hugged them, kissed them. I wanted to give [my children] the cross I was wearing, but they said I should keep it because it would protect me. Then they took me away.” His children were taken first to a hospital in Novoazovsk, then to an orphanage in Donetsk, and later transferred to the Polyany children’s sanatorium in Russia. The father was imprisoned for 45 days. The family was able to reunite in June 2022.
At the same filtration post around the same time, a wounded mother was separated from her wounded 11-year-old son. They had been sheltering with Ukrainian soldiers and civilians at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol when it was captured by Russian forces. Because the mother had no identity documents, she was taken for interrogation. The boy said,
Once we got there, they said my mom had to undergo filtration. They interrogated my mom and then took her to another tent. About one hour later, they brought her back. Then, the Novoazovsk Children’s Affairs Service arrived and said they were taking me away from my mom. They did not even let me say goodbye to her. I have not seen my mom since” (Public Interest Journalism Lab’s Interview, May 2023).
The boy was taken to hospitals in Russian-occupied Novoazovsk and later Donetsk. He eventually was able to contact his grandmother, who brought him back from Donetsk in June 2022.
These cases demonstrate how Russia wields Ukrainian children for demographic and military purposes. The TRP report says,
If a child is left without care, Russian occupation authorities immediately attempt to … assimilate them into Russian society. In none of the documented cases did the occupiers attempt to locate the child’s relatives or transfer the child to guardianship authorities in territory controlled by the Government of Ukraine. Instead, they prepared the child for the future of a Russian citizen—issuing a Russian passport, preparing the child for adoption by Russian families, or placing them in social care institutions (TRP, accessed on July 20).
This approach echoes the Soviets placing children of dissidents into institutions for ideological re-education.
Ukrainian children transferred into Russia-controlled territory without their parents are frequently adopted into Russian families or placed in orphanages. The policy serves Russia’s demographic interests as the country faces long-term population decline (RBC, February 21, 2025). According to the latest Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) report, Ukrainian children deported to Russia “have frequently been placed in foster families or subjected to adoption” in violation of international law. Between April 2022 and June 2023, nearly 47,000 Ukrainian children were granted Russian citizenship under a simplified procedure designed to accelerate their integration into Russian society. Profiles of Ukrainian children, some of whom had living relatives, were uploaded to Russian databases for adoption (OSCE, July 9).
Russia is also systematically indoctrinating and militarizing Russian children and those deported from Ukraine to generate replacements for its huge losses of soldiers in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine (see EDM, July 13, 15). As documented by the OSCE, Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, Save Ukraine, and other organizations, children are exposed to military training in school and recruited into organizations such as Yunarmia, the Movement of the First, and the revived Soviet-style Zarnitsia program, preparing children for future military service (Save Ukraine, September 10, 2025; Yale, September 16, 2025). Even in regular schools administered by Russia, children undergo “170 hours of military training including on the main types of grenades, small arms, hand-held anti-tank grenade launchers, and sniper rifles” (OSCE, July 9).
Children who are violently separated from their parents and placed in an unfamiliar and often hostile environment suffer profound psychological trauma. One mother interviewed by the Reckoning Project described how her 13-year-old son was taken at gunpoint and held for 11 months in an orphanage in Pechory, Russia. After she managed to bring him home, he refused to speak about his experience: “He does not want to talk about how he ended up there or how the Russians treated him. He says, ‘I do not want to remember what happened there’ (Authors’ Interview, March 2024).
According to psychologist Natalia Mraka, violent separation from parents is among the most damaging experiences a child can endure because it abruptly destroys the secure bond on which healthy development depends (TRP, accessed on July 20). Children subjected to such separations often suffer anxiety, depression, nightmares, sleep disorders, eating problems, panic attacks, and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Many become fearful of making mistakes, struggle to trust adults, constantly worry about their relatives, and develop learning and concentration difficulties as their attention remains focused on monitoring their environment for the signs of danger.
Separating children from their parents during filtration exposes the hollowness of Russia’s claim that it is “saving” Ukrainian children. It demonstrates disregard for children’s welfare while treating them as instruments of demographic and military policy. Beyond violating international law, these practices inflict lasting psychological, physiological, and cognitive harm that will affect these children for years. These separations demand continued documentation and accountability.
Notes:
[1] In Russia and Ukraine, sanatoriums are hybrid resort and preventative medical facilities that provide short-term treatments for rest and wellness.
Iryna Lopatina and Svitlana Oslavska contributed to this article.
