von der Leyen - Russia: Return the Missing Ukrainian Children

[JustAnotherGen]

I feel like there was so much jello thrown at the wall in yesterday's European Leadership meeting with Krasnov - that folks who haven't been following the Russian Invasion and war against Ukraine might have been confused about von der Leyen's statements about the children of Ukraine being returned to their families.

Time Article from July - but very much STILL relevant of the ongoing WAR CRIME.
https://time.com/7302345/ukraine-lost-children-russia-war/

“These so-called kidnapped children,” he said. “They were saved by our soldiers, evacuated under fire.” Leafing through the list of names, he added, “We’ll have to figure out how many of them are here with us.” Putin gave no response, and the meeting moved on to other issues. Outside of Russia, the abduction of these children is widely seen as a war crime. For the Kremlin, it did not seem like an urgent matter.

Indeed, over the past few months, the children’s fate has been pushed to the edges of the peace process, intensifying fears across Ukraine that they may never come home. The longer they remain in Russia, the more difficult it will be to return and reintegrate them, as the effect of Russian propaganda and indoctrination takes hold over time. In one case, an 11-year-old boy named Serhii refused to speak to his relatives in Ukraine after spending only a few months in Russian foster care. “They completely brainwashed him,” his older sister, Kseniia Koldin, told me after she managed to bring him home. “They convinced him that Ukraine had been destroyed, that he would starve if he went back.”

This admin cut off funding for Yale to track this.

An independent research group at Yale University has spent the past three years tracking them through Russian news reports, public databases, and posts on social media, identifying more than 8,400 children who have been “systematically relocated” from Ukraine. The Trump Administration, as part of its broader suspension of foreign aid, cut off funding to the program in March; it has continued operating with help from private donors.

In Russian state media, the adoption and re-­education of Ukrainian children is often portrayed as an act of charity and patriotism. The Kremlin commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, bragged in a televised meeting with Putin in 2023 that she had herself adopted a teenage boy from Ukraine. “It’s thanks to you,” she told Putin. (The only other Russian official indicted by the ICC is Lvova-­Belova, who faces the same war-­crimes charges as Putin.)

This is why there are 125 Countries that Putin can't go to.

And Putin is thumbing his nose at the parents of 20K Ukrainian children.

The Guardian: ‘Basically impossible to get them back’: Russia’s mass abduction of Ukrainian children is a war crime, say experts
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/27/russia-ukrainian-children-abduction-war-crime

So far just 1,366 children have been returned or escaped back to Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian organisation Bring Kids Back. A team of experts at Yale University has estimated that as many as 35,000 children may be held in Russia and its occupied territories.

It is feared that many have been taken by Russian forces and sent to military camps or foster care, or have even been adopted by Russian families.

Through extensive examination of Russian databases, official documents, family connections and even satellite images of Russian sites, official buildings and other sources, the Yale team has been able to establish the identities of thousands of children.

Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which has been investigating the abductions, says: “This is likely the largest child abduction in war since world war two – comparable to the Germanification of Polish children by the Nazis.”

My dad was a Cold Warrior. Part of his lore was the East Germans at the Czech border announcing across the border congratulations to my dad the day I was born - giving my weight, length, time of birth, and my mother's room number at the military hospital.

They are THAT evil.

They threw an envelope over the border of pictures of that man's children walking to school that day. He then cried like a little toddler - and Warren Christopher told the Communists to go to hell.

I've been problematic since I was less than 24 hours old!