UKRAINE, KHARKIV OBLAST, Aug 9 — Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Russia has deported 137 children from the occupied territories of the Kharkiv region, the Ukrainian Ombudsman reports. 

After the large-scale invasion in 2022, Russia started deporting Ukrainian children to re-educate them and destroy their national identity. The National Police informs in the report that since the start of the full-scale invasion, Russians have deported 9,683 children from the occupied territories of the Donetsk region, 1,514 from Zaporizhzhia, 947 from Luhansk, 137 from Kharkiv, 1,597 from Kherson, and one from Kyiv regions. 

Between February 24, 2022, and May 14, 2024, 9,380 criminal proceedings were registered by Kyiv authorities over the disappearance of 14,382 civilians, including 2,784 children.

“The occupation authorities are actively promoting for [forcibly deported] children and youth the ideology that residents of the occupied territories of Ukraine are not representatives of Ukrainian culture, but have always been and are representatives of Russian culture,” said analysts and authors of the report, “Systemic Russian policy towards destroying children’s Ukrainian identity.”

Dmytro Lubinets, the Commissioner for Human Rights in Ukraine’s Parliament, says that the activities that Russians commit, including deportation, assimilation, substitution of education, and propaganda, are all signs of genocide against the Ukrainian people. 

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