UKRAINE : How Russia Forcibly Deports Not Only Children but Also Adults
Vladyslav Havrylov & Oleksii Havryliuk

Over a year ago, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Putin for the abduction of Ukrainian children, even though he is responsible for many other war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Why do children here matter more for legislative acts like this than all the deported Ukrainian adults? Let’s take a closer look at this issue.
The ICC’s decision on Russia, even though the country’s leaders are not yet behind bars in The Hague, has already changed the rhetoric and actions of the aggressor’s state in the deportation of children. Now, they take minors for “recreation” and never return them to their parents in occupied territories or to the facilities they resided in.

This is about 260,000–700,000 children out of the whole number of 2.8–4.7 million people deported from Ukraine by Russia. There is more information about minors for a couple of reasons.
1) Media attention after the ICC’s decision was pinned only on the issue of child deportation.
2) It’s easier to prove that children are forcibly abducted than adults.
3) Ukraine and NGOs directly return children and have managed to succeed in 388 cases, but the return of adults is not recorded, as the deportees do not want to publicize such information to protect those evicted Ukrainians remaining in Russia.
4) Deported adults endure different types of crimes and actions by Russia (passportization, forced labor, detention, etc.) than children, and thus may be considered civil hostages, according to Khrystyna Shkudor, Advocacy Manager of Where Are Our People? project, and thus need a different legal base for the prosecution of such cases. The experts in the field already work on the issue of Russia forcibly deporting Ukrainian adults, and it will take a longer time.

Even though Russia targets all Ukrainians for deportation, it has different ways of dealing with various age categories. Thus, there are different crimes committed under the umbrella term of deportation. Due to the efforts of Ukrainian and French legal professionals who facilitated the ICC on their decision to issue arrest warrants for Putin, Russia’s President, and Lvova-Belova, the Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights, this issue is more worked through.
As for adults, it’s harder to prove that a grown-up person was really forcibly deported and not voluntarily moved – that is the main argument that always arises. Russian propaganda heavily exploits this narrative, as it’s hard for adult Ukrainians to return to their homeland through the Russia-Ukrainian border. At other borders, the Russian military often catches deported Ukrainians as they are without documents.
Deportation may constitute a crime against humanity (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Articles 6 and 9), a war crime (Geneva Convention IV, Article 147), or be considered a genocide (UN Genocide Convention, Article II (e)), which could protect adults the same as children from forcible abduction. Though these articles, declarations, and conventions have not stopped Russia anyway, the same as they have not become the legal basis for international prosecutors for the deportation of Ukrainian adults. Yet? Let’s hope.
While deported Ukrainian children undergo systemic indoctrination and ideological re-education, deported adults are used for forced labor or are hosted in Russia’s boarding houses, depending on their age.
Let’s take a look at the story of Kateryna, collected by Where Are Our People? project, – a woman of 23 who was lucky to escape Russia contrary to her friend. Kateryna was forcibly deported from Mariupol to Russia by Russian forces in April 2022. She was taken away with other people to the aggressor’s country and placed in a temporary accommodation center in Taganrog, 112 kilometers away from home.

Kateryna recalls that leaving the center was practically impossible without the help of relatives or volunteers in Russia. Adult deportees find themselves financially stranded, as hryvnias, Ukrainian currency, could not be exchanged for rubles, Russian currency, and Ukrainian credit cards were not accepted. Money could only be exchanged if a deportee accepted temporary protection status, which posed its own risks, like getting a Russian passport and thus becoming a target for Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB).
Luckily, Kateryna had distant relatives in Russia who helped her get out of the temporary accommodation center and reach the border with Estonia. Her friend from Mariupol, whom she encountered at the center, on the contrary, didn’t have relatives in Russia who could give her a hand. She had to find a job in Russia to earn money for the escape. Without any connections, in the aggressor’s state, without a passport or any other protection, looking for a low-paid job.
It’s a common condition of deported Ukrainian adults. The deportees without connections to volunteers or relatives had no choice but to accept temporary protection status in order to find employment and earn money for a ticket back to Ukraine. To track these deported Ukrainians is impossible because they make everything disappear from radars to escape unnoticeably from the aggressor’s country.
Where Are Our People? project has recorded another case of forced labor deported Ukrainian adults in Russia. Olena Yahupova, 50, was taken by the Russian army hostage and spent eight months in captivity, four of which were in an isolation cell, where she was abused by the military. After half a year in detention, the Russian mass media filmed a report on how Olena was released to the territory of Ukraine.
After it was shown on federal channels, the woman was sent to labor slavery with two dozen other Ukrainians. Olena dug trenches for the Russian army on the second line of defense and was raped. The woman was released after two months, miraculously.

Age matters. The deported Ukrainian elderly often lack the means and resources to find a way out of Russia. They have to stay where they were forcibly placed, hundreds or thousands of kilometers away from their homes. This vulnerability makes them a priority target for the aggressor’s deportation efforts. Take a look at the story of 82-year-old Natalia from Mariupol.
During the siege of the city in late February–March 2022, she had to abandon her flat as it was hit by a Russian rocket and live in the basement of the building with other people. At the end of March, Russian troops found her and took her to a filtration camp in Donetsk. Interrogating the woman, Russians took away her passport and proposed to either stay there, in the filtration camp, and be shot, or be deported to Russia – as they said, “to evacuate.”
Natalia chose the last to save her life. Together with other elderly people, Natalia was deported to Astrakhan, Russia – 905 kilometers away from Mariupol. They were placed in a nursing home for the elderly, half empty. Russians made those deportees take Russian passports to receive pensions from the aggressor’s government, thus forcibly becoming Russian citizens. Natalia refused to accept the passport. The woman stays in a nursing home without any documents and cannot come back to Ukraine to this day.
It’s easier for Russians to deport elderly Ukrainians, as they expect them not to protest a lot. There is also an advantage for them when those elderly live together in a nursing house or in similar facilities – the aggressor’s troops take them all. Where Are Our People? project has collected stories of three men in wheelchairs who lived in a nursing home with 200 other elderly in Kakhovka. During the Russian occupation of Kherson, the original staff of the nursing home managed to keep their jobs.
However, after seven months of occupation, in September 2022, the Russian authorities appointed a new staff. The new director made the decision to “relocate” all residents, citing potential dangers. In reality, this was forcible deportation.
Bohdan, Anton, and Oleksandr, the three men in wheelchairs, together with 200 other residents, were informed that they were being taken to Russia for safety reasons, with no other options available. Despite protests from the elderly and disabled residents, they were powerless against the occupiers. The group was forcibly loaded onto buses and initially taken to Dzjankoi, a city in Crimea. Upon arrival, they were transferred to trains bound for Voronezh, Russia. Once in the aggressor’s country, the deported nursing home residents were separated and placed in different facilities.

Placed in nursing homes and in temporary accommodation centers scattered all across Russia, deported adult Ukrainians experience hardship to escape. Forced to find jobs inside the aggressor’s state, often low-paid, or agreeing to accept temporary protection status and take a Russian passport, they often do not have the means or capacities to rescue themselves.
While this, Russians make everything that the deportees never return to Ukraine and tell about the atrocities they experienced. Tracking down deported adults is much harder than children. And since the ICC issued arrest warrants to prosecute the deportation of minors, media attention and efforts of those in power have shifted in that direction, practically blinding everyone to the adult issue. Despite this, returning children is as hard as returning adults.

The deportation of Ukrainians is executed by Russia not only to displace Ukrainians from the occupied territories as part of Russia’s genocidal project but also to address Russia’s demographic issues. The primary focus here is on children, whom Russian families illegally adopt – among other illegal things Russia does with deported minors. Adults also play a role in solving Russia’s demographic issues, as they are forced to find jobs and maintain Russian economics.
While all media attention is paid to the deported children, mainly because of the ICC’s arrest warrants exactly addressing this, adults do not receive such coverage. Only until a legal case or powerful actions beyond statements of concern will be made. The route towards this is a constant voicing of the issue of Russia forcibly deporting Ukrainian adults and pressure of governments or NGOs to initiate a case. The world is at our hands, and such decisions are at our hands, even though it’s Sisyphus’s work.

About the writers:

Vladyslav Havrylov, historian of mass deportations, Research fellow at Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues in Georgetown University, researcher at Where Are Our People? project

Oleksii Havryliuk, researcher at Where Are Our People? project
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