Ukraine’s Stolen Future: Demanding Justice for Deported and Indoctrinated Children by Russia

The documentary’s emotional core focused on the story of Gosha, a child taken from the Oleshky Children’s Boarding School and relocated deep into occupied territory. As Maksimas Milta reminded the audience, “This documentary film is not about this individual, particular story alone—it’s about the fates of hundreds and thousands of kids who have not been able to be returned. From the whole figure—19 and a half thousand children who were deported—only 1,300 have been returned to Ukraine. If we do the math and think about one child being returned every single day, it would take almost a century to return them all. And that is the scope and the scale of atrocities that have been committed against children.” 

As Pomerantsev made clear, the deportation of children is part of Russia’s broader effort to obliterate the concept of Ukraine. This is achieved not only through bombs and borders but by reengineering the identities of the most vulnerable. Asfari elaborated that Russian authorities are fully prepared to "integrate children into Russian society, either through adoption or foster families," severing them from their heritage, families, and nation. This cultural and familial rupture is not spontaneous; it reflects what Pomerantsev described as an "abusive and genocidal family" structure, created "at the barrel of a gun."

The panel emphasized that these actions are not only morally reprehensible—they are legally indefensible. Asfari outlined how they violate international statutes, explaining that there is an "absolute prohibition on the unlawful deportation or forcible transfer of individuals during wartime." Under the Geneva Convention, children enjoy special protection, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child affirms the right to identity, which includes name, nationality and family relations. What is being done to Ukrainian children breaches every one of these protections.

Inside the occupied territories, cultural erasure is swift and systematic. In one of the schools The Reckoning project has worked with, for example, 64 out of 70 of the teachers were fired because they refused to collaborate with the new authorities. Those who remained were forced to conduct compulsory classes, enforcing Russian language and ideology. These are not isolated events. They reflect what the panel identified as a "totalitarian remaking of an entire country," where education becomes a tool of enforced loyalty, and identity is treated as something that can be overwritten.

The objective is not only indoctrination—it is leverage. Pomerantsev warned that these children will be used as hostages, describing a future in which Russia might return a few in exchange for territorial concessions. He clearly stated: “It really confirms this idea of Russia as a terrorist state. This is what terrorists do. They’re stealing and abducting children and holding them hostage.”

As the conversation turned to international response, Pomerantsev reflected on the deeper challenges facing democracies today: “To support democracy and still believe in justice [and] democratic order—we really have to change our mentality. I think we’ve had a very wrong idea about how you achieve democratic ends. We got very lazy. We’ve had too many decades of success, and we thought that justice would just happen: the media would publish stories, a lawyer somewhere would take it to trial. But on the other side—the authoritarians, the extremists— they’ve learned to combine criminal networks, disinformation, and state power in a very effects-driven way. They identify an aim—like bringing far-right parties to power in Europe—and use all the tools at their disposal to achieve that. We have to start thinking: what is the democratic version of this? In this space, it’s thinking about what are the dependencies that Russia has, particularly in places where international law still matters.”

To meet this challenge, The Reckoning Project has pioneered a model that merges legal precision with investigative storytelling—"the first NGOs to put lawyers and journalists together into a weapon of justice." Legal accountability must be built deliberately, and backed by political will and international visibility. However, that visibility is still lacking. Pomerantsev pointed out: "What hasn’t happened is a global campaign for Ukraine’s children that would be recognizable and instantly emotive." The absence of this campaign is not just a gap in awareness—it is a moral failure that allows crimes to persist in the shadows.

Ukraine House in Denmark is deeply grateful to the panelists and The Reckoning Project for their unwavering dedication to justice. This event served as a call to action to the international community: to ensure every Ukrainian child’s right to identity, safety, and return home is protected; to demand accountability for those responsible; and to insist that the international community rise to the challenge with coordinated legal and diplomatic pressure.