How Save Ukraine NGO rescues Ukrainian children from Russian 'abduction and indoctrination' program

Recently, hromadske presented an investigative film "Guide through Hell" about the abduction of Ukrainian children by Russia. Our journalists tracked down the kidnapped boy's grandmother and traveled with her several thousand kilometers, three months and dozens of institutions to get 9-year-old Mykyta back from the occupied territory.

This story had a happy ending: the boy now lives with his grandmother in Poland. Nevertheless, not all relatives of abducted minors undergo interrogations by the FSB, lie detectors, and months of waiting for DNA tests. That is why thousands of Ukrainian children remain in the hands of Russians.

Together with the investigators, the grandmother was assisted by the Save Ukraine NGO, which works to return abducted children. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, they have managed to rescue 223 children.

Every fifth Ukrainian child is under Russian authorities

Mykola Kuleba is a former Ukrainian presidential commissioner for children's rights. He has over 25 years of experience in this field. In 2014, he founded the Save Ukraine NGO and now runs it. We meet at the foundation's Kyiv office. Behind Kuleba's back is a map of Ukraine with tiny flags and colorful threads stretched from one settlement to another. These are the foundation's hubs and the routes used to transport victims of Russian aggression.

"We are evacuating the most vulnerable people from the war zones. Today there are about 110,000 such people. We also rehabilitate those displaced by the war in one of our centers ‘Hope and Healing’. Children and their families stay there for up to three months and receive shelter, humanitarian aid, psychosocial support, etc. There is a separate program to help children and women who have been sexually abused," explains Kuleba.

We focus on the abduction and return of children.

Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian Ombudsperson for Children's Rights, has herself admitted to the removal of 700,000 children since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. According to Kuleba, over the nine years of war, 1.5 million underage Ukrainian citizens have been under Russian control (in the occupied territories and in Russia itself). That is, every fifth child! And yet, only 19,546 of them have been identified. These are the cases that have been officially recorded: when a parent, guardian or witness of a child's abduction reported it.

Although Russia claims to be protecting them from war, Ukrainians and the world know that they have been abducted. Russia refuses to provide information about the Ukrainian children it is hiding or to cooperate with a neutral intermediary, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, to register and repatriate them.

It was for the illegal deportation of underage Ukrainian citizens that the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin and Lvova-Belova. This was facilitated, among other things, by the cases of stolen children submitted by Save Ukraine to the ICC (through the offices of the Ombudsperson, Ukraine’s Security Service, and the Prosecutor General).

I ask, why does Putin need our children?

"In his plan to destroy Ukraine, children are in the first place. He will kidnap a generation of children, expel some of them from Ukraine, and another 30% of children have left with their parents for other countries. Since 2014, we have had half the number of children in Ukraine. In order to destroy Ukraine, it is necessary to destroy its identity, and it is easier to do this through children by brainwashing them. That's why the enemy is doing everything to keep them and not hand them over."

The return of one child costs from $3,000 to $5,000

In Russia, Save Ukraine is recognized as a terrorist organization because it allegedly steals children from the new Russian territories! Kuleba himself has been on Russia's sanctions lists since 2015. When one of the relatives goes to pick up their children in Russia, they are shown photos of the NGO’s employees at the border and asked if they know them or cooperate with them. If you say that you do, it is a 100% guarantee that the trip will be fruitless.

Kuleba does not reveal how the organization manages to return the children. There are methods and ways, they have been devised. A legend is thought out for each mission. But to unveil how it happens is to fail the mission.

Kuleba admits that it costs $3,000-5,000 to rescue each child. Sometimes you have to buy information from officials or "grease the wheels" of people who can do something for Ukrainians. This is facilitated by Russian corruption.

For its part, Russia uses various methods: from intimidation to tempting offers to keep children there.

Some are told that their relatives have abandoned them and no one cares about them; others are told that it is dangerous to return to the country during the war. If someone refuses to accept Russian citizenship, they first promise the moon. One of the 14-year-old boys rescued by Save Ukraine said that he was forced to take a Passports are issued at the age of 14 in RussiaRussian passport. He refused. He was rewarded with a housing certificate worth 1 million rubles ($10,995) when he turned 18. And they promised to give him 100,000 rubles ($1,100) immediately. The teenager did not accept the offer. However, many other children agreed to take the money.

"If you look at it, a certificate for 1 million rubles is about $10,000. You can buy a house somewhere in a village outside the Urals for that. This policy is deliberate to resettle young people across the country. Russia is facing a demographic crisis. The enemy gets smart Ukrainian children who will be able to work for them in the future. Before that, they will be brainwashed. I know that Ukrainian children were taken by bus to Moscow to listen to [Vladimir] Solovyov (a Russian propagandist - ed.)," Kuleba says.

A boy was rooting for the Russian Empire and Putin: how Russian propaganda works

The former ombudsman tells the story of the deported Denys. He was a pro-Ukrainian teenager who wanted to return home. But under the influence of propaganda, he did not: "I'm not going back, there are Nazis there. They will take me to the army and kill me, and here I am entitled to an apartment. A few months later, Denys was already in the a Russian youth military-patriotic organization founded by the Russian Ministry of Defense in 2016. The organization consists of schoolchildren aged 8 and older. Members are taught how to use various types of weapons, taken on excursions to military units, and indoctrinated with the "Russian world" ideology. The "Young Army" is often compared to youth organizations in Nazi Germany - the Hitler Youth and the Soviet Pioneers and Komsomol.‘Young Army’ and was rooting for the Russian Empire and its leader Putin.

And he wasn't pretending – things like this do work. Through propaganda and school curricula imbued with hatred for Ukraine, they turn children against us and use them in armed conflicts. Both against Ukraine and in Syria or Israel," Kuleba concludes.

He knows of many cases where 13-year-old teenagers abducted at the beginning of the war in eastern Ukraine grew up to become 22-year-old Russian soldiers. Now they are convinced that there are Nazis and NATO in Ukraine, so they are consciously against their homeland.

Not a single rescued child will be sent to an orphanage

In May 2022, Russia simplified the process of acquiring Russian citizenship for Ukrainian children. After receiving a Russian passport, Ukrainian children can be adopted by Russian families and change their names. This makes it almost impossible for Ukrainian relatives or authorities to find these children or legally return them to Ukraine.

We know why Putin needs children, but why do ordinary Russians who adopt them need them?

"They think they are doing a good deed," explains Kuleba. "The Russians are convinced that we have Nazis here who raised children to hate everything Russian. And they will re-educate them, change their minds, help them love Russia. They see this as their mission."

A year ago, Maria Lvova-Belova posted a video with children brought from Mariupol and said that they hated Putin and Russia, but we worked with them for two weeks, improved their health, and they are already singing our songs and loving us.

I wonder if there is a point of no return, when a child brought home cannot be "converted" to Ukrainianness again?

According to Kuleba, adults cannot be changed. They are already formed. With children, it is 100% possible.

"A child's brain is plastic, and by the age of 18, a child with any thoughts can be re-educated, it's a matter of forming new neural connections. It's a matter of time. 

We have a boy, Kyrylo, who is 14. He lived in a Russian family that turned him against Ukraine. He didn't want to come back, and his sister and I really struggled to convince him until the very end. Six months after returning home, he asked: ‘Can you give me some journalists? I want to tell my story’. There are transformations in the opposite direction."

Russians have changed their tactics of recruiting children: less with a stick, more with a carrot

At first, the Russians intimidated children. Back then, it was easier to explain or show that it was better at home. Now they work in the context of a seemingly "friendly" atmosphere: they dress the child well, feed him or her, take him or her to the circus, zoo, take him or her into a family, and create good conditions.

"And we return them to war. Perhaps some relative of his or hers has died, there are air raid alerts, there is no certainty. And a child needs three basic things: stability, safety, and well-being. We try to envelop children with love. Everyone has a place where they live; there are people who look after them. A child knows that he or she will not be expelled and will be protected. And that their basic needs, including education, will be met."

For several months, the children recover in the foundation's centers, where psychologists work with their traumas. There they catch up on their studies, specialists study their needs, and work with their families continues. Then Ukrainian families are sought for orphans or children whose parents have been deprived of parental rights. No child will be placed in an orphanage.

Finally, Kuleba tells us the story of a 12-year-old boy, which really impressed him. When Save Ukraine had already transported him home, Kuleba asked him if he was afraid to return to Ukraine.

"They took him to a camp and wouldn't let him go back. The teenager replied: ‘Every night I thought of a plan to escape. I had already foreseen everything, but I didn't know how I would get through the minefields’. That is, if we had not saved him, he would have walked over the mines just to get back to his mother and grandmother."

You can contact Save Ukraine via the hotline. It receives about 300 calls a day. For each stolen child, a case is opened and an investigation is conducted.

She made a promise to herself that she would return to Ukraine with her 12-year-old brother

Now 19-year-old Ksenia Koldina works for Save Ukraine. As a child, she was living under Russian occupation. Now she talks about her experience on Ukrainian and foreign platforms. This year she entered the university and is studying to become a TV journalist. With her newly acquired specialty, she will continue to work at Save Ukraine. She shared her story with hromadske.

Ksenia and Serhiy Koldin's mother was deprived of parental rights for alcohol abuse. They have different parents, and the children did not know them. The brother and sister were adopted by a family from Vovchansk. As it turned out later, it was to receive funds from the state.

In the summer of 2022, the adoptive mother sent the boy to a Russian vacation camp. The occupiers assured him that he would be safe there and would improve his health. Ksenia saw how children were taken away: they put pressure on relatives, forged signatures of parents with disabilities. She realized that she might not see her brother, but she could do nothing. As soon as she turned 18 (and thus stopped receiving benefits), her foster mother dragged her to Shebekino, Russia, to study at a college to become a hairdresser. Without her consent, she got her a Russian certificate.

Already at the Russian college, Ksenia was offered to change her citizenship, lured with payments and housing. When she refused, they kicked her out under the pretext that the town was being shelled and it was dangerous there.

The girl promised herself that she would return to Ukraine with her 12-year-old brother, her only family member. Of course, he was left in Russia.

She called him, but knew that he had been taken into a foster family, which also "fell for the benefits." Through Ukrainian social services, she learned about Save Ukraine and asked for help. After the paperwork, which was taken care of by the foundation, she gathered the documents and went to pick up Serhiy.

Her brother was grumpy, did not want to hug her, and said that he would not go to Ukraine because there was war and Nazis there. He claimed to like it in Russia where he already made friends.

"It felt like he was being pressured. I did not recognize him. We talked for three hours, I tried different ways of persuasion and finally manipulated him: I said we would go for a month and if we didn't like it, we would return," Ksenia recalls.

She says that she miraculously managed to take her brother with her as the Russian family was going to officially adopt him. When they entered Ukraine, it seemed that even the air was different. The siblings cried with happiness.

"Now Serhiy lives in a wonderful Ukrainian family. They are Mykola Kuleba's friends, and my brother likes it there very much. I work at the Save Ukraine recovery center. All my life I dreamed of visiting Kyiv and having a Ukrainian flag. Now I have one: Mykola Mykolayovych gave it to me. I am happy that I was able to come back," Ksenia smiles.

This report is part of hromadske's special 10th anniversary project "On the Same Wave," which highlights 10 impactful initiatives that have helped develop Ukrainian society and meaningfully improved people's lives.