Dr. Kateryna Rashevska is a Ukrainian international law scholar and legal expert at the Regional Center for Human Rights in Kyiv, and a PhD in international law at Taras Shevchenko National University. She specializes in international crimes against children, accountability for deportation and forcible transfer, and post-war reparations. Rashevska helped author submissions to the International Criminal Court on crimes committed against Ukrainian children by Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, contributing to ICC arrest warrants, and has worked on a UN General Assembly draft resolution on repatriation of deported children. She advises multiple Ukrainian and international bodies on humanitarian law implementation and genocide-related crimes.
In this interview with Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rashevska speaks about the deportation and forcible transfer of Ukrainian children by Russia. She details the legal prohibitions under international humanitarian law, the genocide threshold under Article 6(e) of the Rome Statute, and the evidence used in ICC submissions that helped lead to arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova. Rashevska explains the mechanics of Russia’s re-education system, the obstacles to repatriation, and the emerging UN-based mechanism to secure children’s return.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: To start, up to international legal standards of claims, what makes the forcible transfer and deportation of Ukrainian children an international crime?
Dr. Kateryna Rashevska: In accordance with Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians in time of war, the deportation and forcible transfer of children are absolutely prohibited. No reservations or derogations are permitted, and the Russian Federation, as the successor state to the USSR, is legally bound by this prohibition. At the same time, under a very narrow set of conditions (imperative security, military or medical reasons), the evacuation of children may be permissible. The line between forcible displacement and evacuation is clear. To understand why Russian agents are suspected specifically of deportation and forcible transfer, it is necessary to outline the IHL provisions that Russians violated:
– the displacement of children took place to the territory of the aggressor State or to occupied territory without coordinating these actions with the protecting power (which Russia continues to evade appointing) or with the ICRC;
– Ukraine, as the State of nationality of the children, was not notified of such displacement; in the case of orphans, Ukraine did not give consent for such evacuation, although IHL requires this from its competent authorities;
– in many cases there were no legal ground for such displacement;
– the Russian Federation did not make efforts to properly identify the children (there is no Russian registry of “evacuated” children) or to ensure their family reunification. Notably, President Putin’s order to establish an Interagency Working Group intended to facilitate such reunification was issued only on 16 May 2023, that is after the ICC arrest warrant;
– the Russian Federation did not return the children to their previous places of residence once the circumstances justifying their displacement had ceased. According to statements by Maria Lvova-Belova, at least 380 Ukrainian children were placed in Russian families, and another 400 remain in Russian shelters;
– the Russian Federation is deliberately and unjustifiably delaying the repatriation of Ukrainian children, creating not only factual barriers but also legal ones. One of the most significant is the imposition of Russian citizenship through Putin’s decrees, along with the imposition of corresponding obligations, including military service.
Jacobsen: What is the legal threshold for labeling as genocide?
Rashevska: The deportation and forcible transfer of Ukrainian children exhibit the objective element of genocide—namely, the forcible transfer of children from one group to another, as defined in Article 6(e) of the Rome Statute of the ICC. At the same time, crucial to establishing genocide is demonstrating the perpetrators’ intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the protected group through such acts.
This immediately raises several questions. What criteria should be used to confirm that the forcibly displaced children belong to the Ukrainian national group—citizenship, the presence of identity documents, self-identification, the position of their parents? Furthermore, one must answer how, by deporting and forcibly transferring Ukrainian children, Russian agents are destroying the Ukrainian nation. From this perspective, close attention must be paid to the purpose behind these acts.
In practice, the aggressor state is using Ukrainian children — instrumentalizing them, sometimes even weaponizing them — to serve multiple goals. They’re trying to fix their own demographic crisis. They’re rebuilding a standing army, destroyed by Ukraine in 2022 — and in doing so, becoming a new threat to regional peace and security. They’re using children in propaganda, trying to legitimize their crimes — remember the narratives they used to justify the full-scale invasion. They’re manipulating the issue of returning children, shaking Ukrainian society from the inside. And through re-education and forced russification, they’re planting a long-term time bomb — even if some children are eventually repatriated. And that, in turn, demands a serious reintegration policy from our side.
Today, Russia has abducted at least 19,546 children. Around 90% are still under its control. Some quick demographic math shows that — depending on fertility rates — in just two generations, Ukraine could lose between 150,000 to over 700,000 people. And Russia? It gains that same number.
Jacobsen: You helped build ICC submissions on crimes against children. What evidence is decisive in such cases?
Rashevska: The most compelling evidence comes from the testimonies of the returned children and their family members, combined with open-source information, NGO reports, and investigative journalism. It is also crucial to watch and listen to what the suspected perpetrators say and how they behave. Their statements often contain critical inconsistencies, distortions, or outright lies, which help establish not only the facts but also intent.
At the beginning of this work, we primarily relied on OSINT analysis and cross-checking information. After the return of larger groups of children from Russian control, the evidentiary toolkit has become much more diverse, although not everything can be disclosed in order to prevent the destruction of valuable evidence.
Jacobsen: Russia’s long-standing effort to “re-educate” Ukrainian children continues to evolve. How?
Rashevska: The Russian Federation has been consistently implementing a policy aimed at the complete transformation of the educational space in the occupied territories of Ukraine, with the purpose of assimilating Ukrainian children, eradicating their cultural and national identity, and subordinating them to the value orientations of the aggressor state. The violations documented by myself and the Regional Center for Human Rights include the forcible Russification of the educational process, political indoctrination, the militarization of educational content and leisure, restrictions on the use of the Ukrainian language, the imposition of Russian citizenship, violations of the rights of Ukrainian educators, and the replacement of Ukrainian teaching staff with citizens of the Russian Federation through the colonization of occupied territories.
Moreover, tens of thousands children are systematically taken to re-education camps, where, since 2025, the stay programs have been standardized at the initiative of Putin’s United Russia party in order to strengthen the militarization component. Children are trained as if they were young soldiers, with the aim of encouraging them to link their future to serving in the Russian Armed Forces. We have managed to document 164 camps where such re-education takes place: in Russia, Belarus, and the occupied territories of Ukraine.
The policy of re-educating Ukrainian children is destructive for peacebuilding efforts, as violations of academic and artistic freedom, linguistic rights, as well as the falsification and distortion of historical facts, the degradation of the individual, and the denial of the right to self-determination of an entire nation lead to further degradation and fuel open conflict. The evidence we have gathered — including regulatory documents, official statements of officials, and the factual testimonies of affected children and their families — demonstrates a deliberate policy that contradicts international humanitarian law, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and other international obligations of Russia.
Jacobsen: What are the main obstacles families face retrieving children deported to Russia or Belarus?
Rashevska: The return of Ukrainian children is carried out by public organizations, charitable foundations, and volunteers in partnership with government agencies through the BKB UA Initiative. For example, one of the first organizations to start working on the return of Ukrainian children from the Russian Federation and the temporarily occupied territories was the international charitable organization Charitable foundation SOS Children’s Villages Ukraine. As early as February 2022, the organization facilitated the actual evacuation of family-type orphanages, in particular from Donetsk and Luhansk regions and Kharkiv region, and the reunification of families separated as a result of hostilities.
The main obstacle in the process of returning ‘status’ Ukrainian children is the consistent policy of the Russian Federation aimed at unjustifiable delay in their repatriation. Elements of this policy include:
- Persistent refusal to send the list of deported and forcibly transferred Ukrainian children to the Central Tracing Agency of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
- Imposing Russian citizenship on children by the decision of the head of an institutional care facility, in violation of the best interests of the child.
- ‘Scattering’ children across the territory of the Russian Federation, particularly in regions several thousand kilometers away from their country of origin.[1]
- Inclusion of children in the Federal Data Bank of Orphans through their actual place of residence, which allows their adoption and establishment of guardianship by Russian citizens but complicates identification by Ukrainian authorities.[2]
- Forcible transfer of at least 380 Ukrainian children to foster care[3] and 78 to adoption,[4] with probable changes to their personal data.
- Political indoctrination and inducement to refuse repatriation through bribery or threats.[5]
According to the Russian side, the process of returning a child takes from one to three months.[6] Representatives of Ukraine also confirm the considerable length of the process.[7] To resolve the issue of a child’s return, Russia requires personal data of the child and information about the applicant (the child’s legal representative), as well as the probable place of stay in the territory under Russian control. Thus, the burden of finding the children rests entirely on Ukraine, while representatives of the Office of the Commissioner for Children’s Rights under the President of the Russian Federation decide whom to return, often citing the ‘absence/ of information about the child in the specified location.
Although states acting as intermediaries, primarily Qatar and the Vatican, as well as certain individuals providing good services (such as the U.S. First Lady Melania Trump), are currently involved in the process of returning Ukrainian children, the efforts mostly concern family reunifications rather than the repatriation of abducted young Ukrainians, whom the Russians continue to refuse to release.
Jacobsen: You have proposed a unified legal mechanism for returning deported children. What would be the mechanism?
Rashevska: The concrete steps to create such a mechanism include:
Diplomatic Pressure: it involves joint diplomatic efforts at the UN level to compel the Russian Federation to adhere to at least its obligations under Article 78 of the Additional Protocol (I) to the Geneva Conventions. This entails promptly providing comprehensive lists containing the names and whereabouts of all Ukrainian children who have been unlawfully deported or forcibly transferred by Russian agents and who crossed the border of the RF including with adults.
UN General Assembly Resolution: The next crucial move is to adopt a resolution in the UN General Assembly outlining international obligations regarding the repatriation of Ukrainian children. This resolution will clearly delineate the requirements for Russia, Ukraine, and the States Parties of the Geneva Conventions, in accordance with Article 1 common to them.
Legal Mechanism Creation: Building upon the adopted Resolution, it is imperative to establish a unique legal mechanism for the return of Ukrainian children. This can be achieved by appointing a neutral third party to mediate and oversee the negotiation and implementation of a series of binding international treaties between Ukraine and the Russian Federation.
Individualized Approach: It is crucial to ensure that any agreed-upon mechanism for the return of Ukrainian children incorporates an individualized approach. This involves conducting independent and impartial assessments of the best interests of each child, as determined by a customized return plan.
It is important to emphasize that certain elements of the proposed mechanism have already been implemented or are being developed at the state level. For example, the aforementioned mediation and good services. In addition, President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced the adoption of a UN General Assembly Resolution on deported Ukrainian children, which is likely to be introduced by Kenya. At the national level, procedures have also been developed for the identification, return, and reintegration of children who were under Russian control.
Jacobsen: How have the UN bodies, the Council of Europe, and the EU responded to calls for accountable child repatriation?
Rashevska: To date, there is significant support for Ukraine’s efforts to return our children from under Russian control. For almost two years, the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children, comprising over 40 states from various regions as well as the EU and the Council of Europe as organizations, has been active. At the level of the annual UN General Assembly resolution on the human rights situation in the occupied territories, calls have been made for the return of forcibly displaced children. In addition, the Russian Federation has been subject to a corresponding obligation under the recent judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia. As mentioned, the ICC’s issuance of arrest warrants against Putin and Lvova-Belova has had a significant impact on accelerating returns, while sanctions imposed by the EU, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States in connection with crimes against Ukrainian children serve as an additional important lever of pressure on the aggressor state in this area.
Jacobsen: These crimes involve ‘adoptions,’ guardianship papers, new identities, and passports. How are these challenged in the court?
Rashevska: Such “documents” serve as evidence of a crime—specifically, the intent to Russify these children and keep them under Russian control permanently. At the same time, it should be noted that adoption in Russia is under secrecy; there are very few court decisions on adoptions available to us. Moreover, it is not precisely known how many Ukrainian children have had their identities altered through changes to their names, surnames, dates, or places of birth. Each case requires a full investigation to obtain documentary confirmation of these facts.
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Kateryna.
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[2] http://www.bryanskobl.ru/docs/ombudsman/child-report-2023.pdf, p. 101
[3] https://deti.gov.ru/Deyatelnost/documents/258
[4] https://meduza.io/feature/2024/03/11/oni-mogut-nachat-protivodeystvovat
[6] https://deti.gov.ru/uploads/magic/ru-RU/Document-0-258-src-1705931603.6543.pdf
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Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for The Good Men Project, International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN 0018-7399; Online: ISSN 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), A Further Inquiry, and other media. He is a member in good standing of numerous media organizations.
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The post Forcible Transfer of Ukrainian Children: Dr. Kateryna Rashevska on International Crimes, Genocide Criteria, and Repatriation Barriers appeared first on The Good Men Project.