Russia has launched a sick catalogue for kidnapped Ukrainian children being offered up for adoption who are sorted for hair and eye colour.
The database, revealed by the head of a Ukrainian NGO, holds information on 294 children and is available on the education department of occupying Russian authorities in the Luhansk region.
Mykola Kuleba, CEO of the Save Ukraine organisation, wrote in an Instagram post: ‘Most children in this catalog were born in Luhansk Oblast before the Russian occupation and had citizenship.’
‘Parents of some of them were killed by occupation authorities, others were simply issued Russian identification documents to legitimize their abduction.’
The database describes the children as ‘orphans and children left without parental care.’
They are presented with photos, age, gender and personality traits. Some were described as ‘obedient’ and ‘calm.’
It allowed prospective adopters to filter children by age, eye and hair colour, and the preferred form of guardianship, such as adoption or foster care.
Kuleba said: ‘The way they describe our children is indistinguishable from a slave catalog. This is child trafficking in the 21st century, and the world must act to stop it immediately.’
While Ukrainian officials have identified nearly 20,000 children who have been abducted by Russia, the real number is believed to be far higher.
Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets puts the number at up to 150,000, while Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Daria Herasymchuk has given a range of 200,000–300,000.
So far, less than 1,500 have been returned back home.
Many of the children who grew up in areas occupied by Russia since it first invaded Ukraine in 2014, including parts of Crimea and Donetsk, have been ‘systematically deported and transferred to Russian families in Moscow and other Russian regions.’
The issue of Russia abducting children was the subject of a set of International Criminal Court arrest warrants against Putin and Russia’s children’s commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova.
Both were accused of unlawfully deporting children from occupied areas of Ukraine and transferring them to the Russian Federation.
The ICC wrote in its March 2023 warrant that Putin ‘bears individual criminal responsibility’ as Russia’s leader.
It also accused Lvova-Belova of the same, adding that both had been committing the crimes since at least February 2022.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the news at the time, boldly claiming that ‘decisions of the International Criminal Court have no meaning for our country, including from a legal standpoint.’
Russia withdrew from the ICC in 2016 after it was heavily criticised for illegally annexing Crimea.