Remarks by Nathaniel A. Raymond, Executive Director, Humanitarian Research Lab
to the United Nations Security Council
04 December 2024
Thank you, Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield, President of the Security Council, and representatives of member states for allowing me to brief you this morning. I am Nathaniel Raymond, Executive Director of the Humanitarian Research Lab - or “HRL” - at the Yale School of Public Health.
Yesterday, our team released Russia’s Systematic Program of Coerced Adoption and Fostering of Ukraine‘s Children, the latest report from the US State Department-supported Conflict Observatory program. It is the findings of this over twenty month long investigation utilizing the collection and analysis of open source data and commercially available satellite imagery that I am here to discuss with you today.
HRL’s inquiry identified 314 children from Ukraine that, following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of the country, have been placed in this systematic, Kremlin-directed program of coerced adoption and fostering. These identifications resulted from cross-corroboration of multiple points of data to a high confidence standard, including photographs, travel itineraries, physical characteristics, and other specific details related to each child. At the heart of our investigation, is the discovery of three interconnected Russia-affiliated child placement databases in which children from Ukraine were placed as if they were an orphan from Russia. In one case the database involved was financially supported by President Putin’s office itself.
The dossiers for each child HRL identified have been transferred to Ukraine’s government, including law enforcement, and the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. The children HRL could find were exclusively, we believe, from Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, but information reviewed by HRL indicates children from Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Kharkiv oblasts - areas captured by Russia after February 2022 - are likely included in the program as well. Just under half of the children HRL identified are part of sibling groups present in the program. In at least one case, a sibling was separated by Russia from their brothers and sisters as part of placement with citizens of Russia.
The total number of children from Ukraine Russia has placed in its adoption and fostering pipeline is not known and cannot be determined from the data analyzed for this report. Without Russia providing the government of Ukraine and the International Committee of the Red Cross However, 148 of the 314 children HRL identified were listed in a trio of Russia’s child placement databases, one of which is underwritten by the office of President Putin himself.
The placement of children in the aforementioned databases by Russia occurred after the illegal annexation in September 2022 by Russia of internationally recognized territory belonging to Ukraine. Before that point, the children were held at temporary accommodations at what HRL refers to as “midpoint locations” prior to the illegal annexation for up to six months.
President Putin’s personal Presidential Air Wing and Russia’s Aerospace forces - according to analysis of online photos and commercially available satellite imagery - transported the children from Ukraine into and within Russia in 2022.
208 of the 314 HRL identified have been placed with citizens of Russia through adoption or some form of permanent or temporary guardianship. 67 of the 314 children have been formally naturalized as citizens of Russia.
The naturalization of children originally from Ukraine as citizens of Russia is a core aspect of the entire operation. The program relied on legal maneuvering by President Putin himself, Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s Children’s Rights Commissioner, Anna Kuznetsova, a member of the Duma and a party official in United Russia, President Putin’s primary political apparatus, and others to ensure that these activities complied with Russia’s federal law governing adoption of Russian children. Russia’s adoption laws require that children are citizens of Russia before they can be adopted. As a result, Presidential declarations, legal amendments passed by the Duma, Russia’s parliament, and other procedural moves were used by the Kremlin to fast track both the renunciation of the children’s citizenship in Ukraine and facilitate the issuance of Russian Federation citizenship to the children by proxies, including officials of the Ministry of Education, such as headmasters at boarding schools where the kids were held.
Thus, as President Putin and Lvova-Belova were allegedly violating international humanitarian and human rights law by deporting protected persons - i.e. kids - from Ukraine to Russia, which is an alleged war crime that they have both already been indicted for by the ICC, they were also engaging in a higher order of alleged crime: Transfer of persons from one national or ethnic group to another, which can constitute a Crime Against Humanity under the 1998 Rome Statute. The historical antecedent for this alleged crime is the 8th Nuremberg Trial, known as
the RuSHA trial, in which Nazis and their collaborators were found guilty on multiple charges, including the specific act of forced transfer of Polish Children to Germany for so-called Germanification, which included the destruction of birth certificates. The same alleged crime is occurring now in the 21st Century and it is Russia this time that is committing it.
Russia’s program of coerced adoption and fostering of children from Ukraine is fundamentally based on deception and concealment. The children are presented in the databases without any mention that they are from Ukraine - despite the databases having drop down menus to search occupied areas for children that no children are listed as being present within. Any observer would reasonably believe these are Russian children when, in fact, they are Ukrainian. What’s more, Maria Lvova-Belova stated in October 2022, soon after being placed under sanctions by the United States, that Russia was not adopting children from Ukraine. In point of fact, children from Ukraine were being entered into the database and listed for adoption at precisely that time. HRL has determined that some individual child records have been changed, relevant potential evidence of alleged crimes have been removed from the internet, and profiles of some children may have been removed.
In closing, it is now time for Russia to do what it was legally required to do under the Geneva Conventions, to which it is a party, when it commenced its illegal invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago. Russia must provide Ukraine, the International Committee of the Red Cross, UNICEF, and other relevant authorities a full list of the children it has taken, where they originated from, where they currently are present, and document any changes to the children’s personally identifiable information made by Russia’s officials. Until Russia gives up this information, which it is legally and morally required to do, it will be impossible to fully assess how many children exactly are waiting to go home.
Thank you.