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New OSCE Report Highlights Abduction, Deportation, Forced Russification of Ukrainian Children.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Parliamentary Assembly released a report today on the issue of the abduction, deportation, and Russification of Ukrainian children.
The organization is currently holding its annual Parliamentary Assembly in Porto, Portugal, ahead of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the organization on August 1, 2025.
The report, “Russian Abduction and Deportations of Ukrainian Children,” was written and presented by Swedish parliamentarian Carina Ödebrink, the Special Rapporteur for the OSCE PA Parliamentary Support Team for Ukraine.
“Because of Putin’s war, these children are being robbed of their identity. The obvious intent and scale of the crimes prove that the Russian Federation does not only seek to annex Ukrainian territory, but to erase a generation of Ukrainians in order to argue and demonstrate to the world that the territories it has occupied from Ukraine are now irreversibly Russian,” the report notes.
The report cites figures from Ukrainian officials that the number of deportations of Ukrainian children to Russia is 200,00-300,000, but the Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, has previously claimed that over 700,000 Ukrainian children have been “relocated” to Russia.
Russia has never provided a complete list or record of the number of children it has deported from Ukraine.
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In June, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky raised the issue of child abductions by Russia, to which Moscow replied that Ukraine was “[putting on a] show for childless European old ladies.”
Lvova-Belova is wanted by the International Criminal Court, along with Russian President Vladimir Putin, for the unlawful deportation and transfer of children during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The report details that the deported children are forced to speak Russian, sing the Russian national anthem, participate in military marches and handle firearms. The few children who have been returned show signs of psychological abuse and trauma, including the fear of physical harm and the fear of speaking the Ukrainian language.
In addition to previous resolutions from 2024 in Budapest and 2023 in Vancouver, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly proposes the following steps:
- Demand that Russia provide a list of the abducted children.
- Pressure Russia to immediately cease the forced deportation, transfer, and illegal detention of Ukrainian children.
- Urge [OSCE] governments to intensify cooperation with Ukrainian counterparts.
- Maintain and deepen international coalitions and collaboration.
- Maintain funding for organizations like Yale Human Rights Lab.
- Negotiations for peace and ceasefire must include arrangements for the unconditional safe return of the Ukrainian children.
- Urge the OSCE Executive Structures to invoke the Moscow Mechanism for further investigations into the Russian Federation’s abductions.
The Moscow Mechanism assembles independent experts to establish facts related to a specific human dimension problem. Since the beginning of the Russian Federation’s full-scale war of aggression, the Mechanism has been invoked in relation to the war in Ukraine four times.
The OSCE was founded in 1975 as a forum for security dialogue between East and West during the Cold War, and has 57 participating States, including Ukraine, the Russian Federation, and the United States.
Ukraine has argued for Russia’s suspension from the OSCE after its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
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Kyiv post