Four families, four stories of separation. The authors of ‘Stolen Youth,’ a new book from Meduza about how Russia abducted thousands of Ukrainian children, explain why they wrote it.

Four families, four stories of separation. The authors of ‘Stolen Youth,’ a new book from Meduza about how Russia abducted thousands of Ukrainian children, explain why they wrote it.

Since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, thousands of Ukrainian children have ended up in Russia. The scenarios varied: some fled the combat zone, and the only way out led through the Russian border; others were taken from occupied territories deeper into the occupying country, often under false pretenses, such as a school trip; still others were sent by their own parents to Russian children’s camps to escape the danger, only for the parents to later find they couldn’t get them back. The Russian state made active use of this: it placed the children with new families and even issued them new passports on an expedited basis. In 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague ruled that the removal of children from Ukraine was a war crime. Journalists Nina Nazarova (Russia) and Sviatoslav Khomenko (Ukraine) have collected in their book ”Stolen Youth: How Russia Kidnaps Ukrainian Children — And How Ukrainians Get Them Back” four different stories of families who fell victim to this crime, and have also described in detail those who organized the removal of children, and those who are still helping bring them home.