In this Q&A, Olena Remen, head of the expert group on family-based forms of upbringing and adoption at the Coordination Center for the Development of Family-Based Care and Education in Ukraine discusses the regional implementation of the country's four-year strategy to prioritize family-based care.

A turning point in the campaign to close Romania’s dungeon-like orphanages and cruel homes for the disabled came with the shutting of Camin Spital, a grim block near the Ukrainian border with bars on the windows to stop people from jumping to their deaths.

Ukraine on Saturday announced a probe into alleged sex crimes at a state children’s home after the country’s rights ombudsman visited and decried a lack of official action. Ukraine has more than 51,000 children living in residential care, of whom 78 percent have disabilities, according to a report this month by UNICEF.

A new Financial Times investigation identified and located four Ukrainian children, who were stolen by Russia and put up for adoption on the website “Усыновите.ру”. The children were taken out of orphanages in regions occupied by the Russian army in 2022. Their ages range from 8 to 15 years old.

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.

KYIV, Ukraine—Valeria Sydorova walked toward the Russian border post, her nerves steeled by the proximity of her goal: to get home. The 17-year-old had wiped her phone of anything the Russians might find suspicious, had traveled solo for hundreds of miles and was now within touching distance of Ukraine.

In Russia's Belgorod region, near the Ukrainian border, children are being evacuated by train after regional authorities announced 9,000 minors would be moved to other regions. The move follows weeks of deadly bombardment from Kyiv in the region, repeatedly targeted since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

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.

As the war in Ukraine enters its third year, the nation's children are feeling the overwhelming stress of displacement and life under the constant threat of attack. UNICEF and partners are working to protect children's mental health and provide psychosocial support to keep them healthy and preserve their hope for a brighter future.

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.