Inside horror fight to save Ukrainian children in Russia as 1.6m held

While Ukrainian diplomats tirelessly negotiate the release of Ukrainian soldiers from Russian POW camps, a Ukrainian NGO called Save Ukraine is taking matters into their own hands to rescue Ukrainian children illegally held by the Russian authorities.

And they still have a long way to go.

An estimated 1.6million Ukrainian children are being held in Russian occupied areas of Ukraine or in Russia itself, according to Myroslava Kharchenko, a legal advisor for Save Ukraine.

"But no one knows the exact number for sure," she said.

According to Maria Belova, Russia's Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights, who had a warrant issued for her arrest by the International Criminal Court for deporting Ukrainian children to Russia, at least 740,000 Ukrainian children were living in Russia in 2023.

The difference in numbers depends on what one considers Russia - its prewar territory before 2014, when Russia first invaded Ukraine, or to include the regions it annexed from Ukraine in 2022. In between, much of Ukraine's Donbas had already undergone Russian organized referendums declaring themselves independent.

Some of these Ukrainian kids are with their parents or grandparents, some are not. Some are in orphanages while others are undergoing training in Russian paramilitary camps.

To date, Save Ukraine has returned 855 of them to Ukraine, not including around another 49 young Ukrainian adults who came of age while under Russian control but were already over 18 when rescued.

Kharchenko said: "We are constantly looking for them, establishing their identities, determining their locations, using Open Source Intelligence, figuring out who they are with and what their situation is."

The next step is to make contact with the children, which is often more complicated than it might seem.

"We tracked one group of kids from an orphanage in Donetsk, found their contacts on social media and began communication. But as soon as we mentioned Ukraine, we lost them. When they came back Online we realized from the messaging, from the way they were writing, that we were no longer talking to a child but to a member of Russia's special services."

Distance is also sometimes a problem, with some Ukrainian children having been taken as far away as Siberia or islands in the Far East that used to belong to Japan, Kharchenko said.

The Russians have justified such deportations as evacuations from dangerous war zones, but Kharchenko says this argument doesn't hold water.

"If it were really an evacuation, then they would still be obliged to create lists of those they took, as required under the Vienna Convention."

Instead, she said, she has seen testimony from the seige of Mariupol of the Russian military firing on evacuation columns as they moved through the Green Corridor, nicknamed the death corridor.

Much of the information that Save Ukraine gets is from the children themselves.

She said: "We learn information about those still in Russia from those who we save."

For example, the authorities in occcupied territories threaten to put the children in orphanages if the parents don't get them Russian passports or enroll them in school

Kharchenko said: "And the schools are not staffed by real teachers. They are just interested in dragging them there to fill their heads with propoganda."

That's why one of Save Ukraine's most time important task - prior to rescue operations - is to keep and establish contact with Ukrainian kids in capitivity.

She said: "We had one girl who we had returned. She was certain that Ukraine no longer exists. We returned her to her mother. They tell them that Ukraine no longer wants them and has rejected them. We have to give them a new reality."

Children newly arrived from Russian occupation also receive a place to stay and help finding a job for them and their parents, renewed legal status, psychological counselling, social assistance and medical care.

She said: "We never stop assisting them. They can come back to us at any time for future assistance."

But first the NGO must get the children back home, which is done is a variety of ways, most of which are confidential.

And the Russian don't make it easy for them .

Kharchenko recalled one situation when a grandmother tried to claim her grandson from a Russian orphanage, and even though she had all the proper documents and took a DNA test, the authorites told her she would have to basically go through the process of adopting the child like a foreigner because she was not a Russian citizen.

"It was a trap," Kharchenko said.

Which is why Save Ukraine sometimes uses more direct methods of rescue.

She said: "We plan the rescue operation and take into account everything - location, whether they have documents and whether they will be missed - and we sometimes get military assistance."

Save Ukraine employs paid staff, volunteers and even people they formerly rescued.

She said: "We stablized and rehabilitate the child and then we give them a job with us if they are interested."

Support comes mostly from abroad.

She said: "It's all donors, mostly foreign - private and public. There is also Ukrainian, including a little from our government."

Kharchenko herself has been with Save Ukraine since the start, after the war began in 2014.

When asked whether she was in it til the end, she said: "Yes, definitely."