Gillian Huebner, Executive Director of the Collaborative on Global Children's Issues at Georgetown University, spoke with Karla Jones & Brooklyn Roberts about the children who have been kidnapped and disappeared during Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

As news of Russia’s invasion spread through Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Dr. Natalia Lukina was waiting for a taxi at her home. It was 6 a.m., and she was eager to get to work at Kherson Children’s Home, a state-run foster home for institutionalized children with special needs, where she served as a doctor.

As news of Russia’s invasion spread through Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Dr. Natalia Lukina was waiting for a taxi at her home. It was 6 a.m., and she was eager to get to work at Kherson Children’s Home, a state-run foster home for institutionalized children with special needs, where she served as a doctor.

A teenage orphan who became a posterchild for Moscow's deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia said he was instructed by officials to recite pro-Russian talking points for television cameras and threatened with a beating when he complained about conditions.

The most important phone call of Yevhen Mezhevyi’s life came in mid-June of 2022. His anxiety, fear and exhaustion at the time makes him fuzzy about the exact date. What he does remember is the sound of his son’s voice. Matvii was calling from Russia, where he and his two younger sisters had been forcibly deported nearly a month before — the same morning Mezhevyi, a single father and Ukrainian soldier from Mariupol, had been released without explanation after spending 45 days as a prisoner of war in a Russian penal colony in Donetsk oblast.

Ukraine says more than 19,000 children have been illegally taken by Russia since the war began. NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with two teenagers who were abducted from Ukraine.

During the 14 months for which Veronika Vlasenko attended school in Russia, she was regularly told by teachers and fellow students that she would never be able to go home to Ukraine. “Every day they said to me that I would be staying here for ever and would never leave Russia,” she said. “They told me that Ukraine doesn’t exist, that it never existed, that we’re all Russians … At times the other kids would beat me for being pro-Ukrainian.”

In this conversation moderated by Gillian Huebner, executive director of the Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues at Georgetown University, panelists outline Ukrainian efforts to protect its children and the measures international partners can take to support an effective response to the impact of Russia’s policies of aggression on Ukraine’s future.

Ukrainian officials have condemned a new decree signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in early 2024 simplifying the process of conferring Russian citizenship on Ukrainian children abducted from wartime Ukraine.

Ukraine has condemned a decree signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin making it possible to confer Russian citizenship on Ukrainian children moved to Russia. Last March, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin over Russia's policy of forced child deportations. The Ukrainian foreign ministry called the decree illegal.