According to a recent study of Russia’s systematic operations involving Ukrainian children, at least 6,000 Ukrainian children aged four months to 17 years of age are being held by Russia in “political re-education camps”.

 The network consists of 43 camps, 11 of which are located over 500 miles from Ukraine’s border with Russia. This includes two camps in Siberia and one in Russia’s Far East. The furthest one is near the Pacific Ocean, approximately 3,900 miles from Ukraine’s border with the Russian Federation.

 The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab study, funded by the U.S. State Department, also found that children from the camps are being placed with Russian foster families and that consent from their parents is collected under duress and routinely violated. In May 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree making it easier for Russia to adopt and give citizenship to Ukrainian children without parental care – and harder for Ukraine and surviving relatives to win them back.

 In April 2022, Ukraine’s foreign ministry alerted the international community to the illegal adoption of Ukrainian children – numbers of which were noted as being over 150,000. Notably, the Commissioner for children’s rights under the President of the Russian Federation Maria Lvova-Belova`s is implicated in the report. In October 2022, Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs identified her as a key player in the i