This study is the third in a series of reports authored by the Yale School of Public Health Humanitarian Research Lab (Yale HRL) as part of the Conflict Observatory program examining Russia’s deportation, re-education, and coerced adoption and fostering of children from Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The research presented in this report took place over a twenty-month period and is the most extensive public effort to date to identify and track children from Ukraine subjected to deportation, adoption, and fostering by Russia’s government following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. This report includes the largest high confidence public count of children taken from Ukraine and placed in Russia’s program of adoption and fostering to date.

Executive Summary: Ukrainian | Russian

The research presented here includes a detailed anatomy of the individuals, governmental and non-governmental organizations, legal maneuverings, procedures, and systems used by Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin’s regime to facilitate the adoption and fostering of Ukraine’s children. It details the process by which children from Ukraine came into Russia’s custody, the logistical networks and transportation routes used to move them from Ukraine to and inside Russia, and the processes by which specific children have been naturalized as Russian citizens and placed with citizens of Russia or listed in Russia’s child placement databases.

Yale HRL has determined with high confidence that the Russian Federation has engaged in the systematic, intentional, and widespread coerced adoption and fostering of children from Ukraine. The operation documented within was initiated by Putin and his subordinates with the intent to “Russify” children from Ukraine.

Yale HRL defines Russia’s program of coerced adoption and fostering as the deportation of children from Ukraine and their subsequent placement with citizens of Russia and/or in institutions at which they are listed in Russia’s child placement databases by the explicit command of Russia’s senior federal and occupation authorities. These orders have been executed by multiple elements of the Government of the Russian Federation in close coordination with occupation officials in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.