Ukrainian Children Who Were Abducted Are Returning as Adults
By: Giorgio Provinciali
Live from Ukraine ????????
President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedlystatedthatKyiv authorities have identified approximately 400 locations in Russia where kidnapped Ukrainian children are believed to be held. Thanks to joint efforts with the Vatican and other partners, Ukraine has brought home over 1,600, butthousands of minors remain deported or detained.
Officially, approximately 19,500 have beenidentified. This already horrifying figure, however, may only represent the tip of the iceberg, aseach returned child reveals the workings of a system. These are not isolated incidents orevacuations, as Russian propaganda claims but rathera coherent system of pressure, blackmail, family separation, forced Russification, and, in many cases, militarization.
The stories of minors returned to Ukraine in recent weeks illustrate this with brutal clarity. Eight more Ukrainian children and adolescents have returned from Russian-occupied territories, including an eleven-year-old who had virtually never left his home for four years to avoid detection after his family refused to send him to the school imposed by the occupiers. That same group also included a twenty-one-year-old who was tortured after a search, during which the occupiers attempted to extract a confession of alleged collaboration with the Ukrainian army. In another case, Kyivannouncedthe return of another group of children from the occupation, including a boy left motherless, while his father had lost both legs in a drone strike; a sister and two brothers whose custody the occupiers threatened to take away for refusing to provide Russian documents; teenagers who continued to sing the Ukrainian national anthem in schools polluted by the Moscow regime; and a family forced to live on a mined road, under constant threat of death.
Even more emblematic is the story of an 18-year-old girl who returned to Ukraine after three years in Russia. Her family was forced to flee Mariupol in 2022, but she continued studying online at a Ukrainian school and began planning her return even before reaching adulthood. Here, too, the human element goes beyond the happy ending: that girl didnt simply return, but, for three years, resisteda process of identity absorptiondesigned precisely to prevent her from returning.
In many cases, occupiers threaten to take away children from parents who refuse Russian passports or documents. In others, they force children to study under school curricula rewritten by Moscow. In still others,they turn the homes of Ukrainians into invisible prisons: repeated searches, widespread surveillance, constant intimidation, and interrogations at gunpoint. Among the recently returned minors are a seventeen-year-old interrogated at gunpoint for his pro-Ukrainian stance; a sixteen-year-old threatened with separation from her mother; two brothers, aged 15 and 13, who miraculously survived a bombing; a child just a year and a half old, taken from his mother by the Russian Armed Forces; and a ten-year-old boy kept hidden at home by his father for years to protect him fromforced assimilation.
In other cases, the coercion becomes even more sinister. For example, there is Bohdan, 18, against whom Russian law enforcement attempted to fabricate a criminal case by having him sign documents whose content and implications he did not understand. Another teenager, also named Bohdan, wasreportedlysent to a psychiatric hospital and added to the Russian armys military records. Yet another, Maksym, a 17-year-old with a congenital hearing impairment, came from an openly Ukrainian family whose home had been repeatedly searched.
The Kremlin does not limit itself to deportation or Russification.
It aims to militarize.It takes Ukrainian children removed from their communities, immerses them in propaganda, convinces them that Ukraine is the enemy, and then offers them military loyalty to Russia as a path to integration.
During ahearingin the United States Senate, Kateryna Rashevska, an expert with the Regional Center for Human Rights,documented165 military camps where Ukrainian children are being Russified and militarized.Some were even sent to North Korea for military activities.
If fully confirmed, this pattern would marka shift from the annihilation of identity to the functional preparation of minors as instruments of the Russian war. For this reason, the repatriation operationspromotedby Bring Kids Back UA have value that goes beyond the numerical data, however significant those data may be.
In recent weeks, Ukraine has announced the return of groups of 8, 16, and 17 children and adolescents, along with particularly dramatic individual cases.
Each return provides us with detailed insight into the conditions those children endured and confirms the structure of the crime.
We are talking abouta coercive continuum that has persisted since the beginning of the war, that is, at least since 2014.
During a prisoner exchange, Bohdan Kovalchuk, captured at 17 while trying to reach Toretsk to complete his studies and obtain a Ukrainian diploma, was also returned home. At the checkpoint, he was arrested by the Russians and accused of collaborating with the Ukrainian secret services. Hereturned after nine years. In the same exchange, the former mayor of Kherson, Volodymyr Mykolayenko, was also freed,callinghis release hissecond birthday.
Reducing all this to a humanitarian issue, however serious, is not enough. We are facingan operation that combines territorial occupation, cultural repression, family separation, psychological pressure, and ideological preparation.
The war that Russia has unleashed in Ukraine has lasted so long thatmany of the abducted children are now adults. Each returned life is worth far more than its individual biography. It concerns memory, language, and even the very idea of homeland that other children will carry with them as adults.
In 1.508 days of war,we recorded over 250 videos from ground zero and wrote more than 1,500 articles.
We are doing our best to provide genuine, first-hand reports from zones where almost no press dares to go. This means living in a kill zone constantly. We take the risk, but without your invaluable support, our voices would remain unheard and silent. Without brave people sharing our articles from afar, they would remain unread. Our reports would go unseen, and our efforts would be lost. Theres still a lot of work to do here, as the people around us are also in no better situation.
Were renewing ourfundraising campaignand thanking everyone who joins us in helping to restore what Russia is destroying. Moving forward with only a small reimbursement for each article from a brave newspaper that believes in us is extremely challenging. Thats why we are grateful to all the kind people who support us and trust in our mission.
Even a small donation helps.
Well keep you updated on developments.
Thank you all, dear friends ????????
儿时被绑架，成年才回归
作者：Giorgio Provinciali
翻译：旺财球球
乌克兰前线报道????????
弗拉基米尔泽连斯基总统多次表示，基辅当局已确认，俄罗斯境内约有400处地点，相信关押着被绑架乌克兰儿童。通过与梵蒂冈和其他伙伴的共同努力，乌克兰已接回1600多名儿童，但仍有数千名未成年人被驱逐或非法拘禁。
官方数据显示，约有19,500名被确认身份。然而，这个已令人毛骨悚然的数字或许只是冰山一角，因为每一个回归的孩子都揭示了这一体系的运作。这些并非孤立事件更不是俄罗斯宣传机器所称的撤离而是一套有组织有系统的型为，包含胁迫、勒索、家庭分离、强制俄罗斯化，并在许多情况下还包括军事化训练。
（视频：Alla和我在医院报道，那里收治了从顿巴斯逃离战火、受伤的儿童版权所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
（图：我在一次俄方空袭时躲避炮火版权所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
近几周返回乌克兰的未成年人的经历，残酷且清晰的展示了这一切。又有8名乌克兰儿童和青少年从俄占区返回，其中包括一名11岁男孩，由于他家人拒绝送他去占领当局强制设立的学校，四年来几乎从未出过家门以避免被发现。同一批人中还有一名21岁的青年，在一次搜查后遭到酷刑，俄军试图逼他认罪，承认其与乌克兰军方合作。另一起案例中，基辅宣布又有一批儿童从占领区被接回，其中包括一名失去母亲的男孩，他父亲在一次无人机袭击中失去了双腿；一名姐姐和两个兄弟，因拒绝提供俄罗斯证件而被俄军威胁要夺走监护权；在受莫斯科政权污染的学校里仍坚持唱乌克兰国歌的青少年；以及一个被迫住在布满地雷道路旁、时刻面临死亡威胁的一个家庭。
尤其具有象征意义的是一名18岁女孩的故事：她在俄罗斯待了三年后回到乌克兰。她的家人在2022年被迫逃离马里乌波尔，但她一直通过网络在乌克兰学校学习，并甚至在成年前就开始策划回国。在这里，人性元素超越了所谓的大团圆结局：这名女孩并非简单地回来了，而是在三年间抵抗着一种旨在阻止回归、消除身份认同的机制。
（图：我在乌克兰尼日因的一处掩体拍摄到这些镜头，那里的年轻乌克兰人正在学习医学版权所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
（图：在掩体内，Alla与一些从在大规模入侵一开始即从俄罗斯占领区逃出的难民交谈版权所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
在许多情况下，俄占领者威胁要将拒绝接受俄罗斯护照或证件的父母的孩子夺走。在其他情况下，他们强迫儿童按莫斯科改写的课程体系学习。还有的，把乌克兰人的家变成无形的监狱：频繁搜查、大规模监控、持续恐吓，以及在枪口下审讯。近期被遣返的未成年人中有一名17岁少年因其亲乌克兰立场在枪口下被审问；一名16岁少女被威胁要与母亲分离；两名分别为15岁和13岁的兄弟在一次轰炸中奇迹般生还；一名仅一岁半的孩子被俄军从母亲身边带走；还有一名十岁男孩，其父亲为了让他免受强制同化，将其藏在家中多年。
（视频：我在基辅拍下这些镜头，就在一所幼儿园遭受俄方空袭之后版权所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
在其他案例中，胁迫更为邪恶。例如，有位名叫博丹的18岁青年，俄方执法机构试图通过让他签署他不了解内容与后果的文件来伪造刑事案件。另一名同名的青少年据报被送入精神病院并被列入俄军的兵役档案。还有一名叫马克西姆的17岁少年，患有先天性听力障碍，来自公开表明自己是乌克兰人的家庭，他们的住宅屡遭搜查。
克里姆林宫的目标并不限于驱逐或俄罗斯化。
更在于军事化。
他们将乌克兰儿童从他们的社区中带走，让他们沉浸于宣传中，灌输他们乌克兰是敌人的观念，随后再将对俄罗斯的军事效忠包装成融入社会的道路。
（图：Alla和我在乌克兰利沃夫不可摧毁康复中心录制了这些镜头版权所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
在美国参议院一次听证会上，人权区域中心的专家卡特琳娜拉謝夫斯卡记录了165处对乌克兰儿童进行俄罗斯化和军事化的军事营地。有些孩子甚至被送往朝鲜参加军事活动。
若这一模式被完全证实，这将意味着从消灭身份认同转向将未成年人功能性地培养为俄罗斯战争工具的新阶段。正因如此，让孩子回家推动的遣返行动，其价值已超越单纯的数字，尽管这些数字本身也极为重要。
（图：儿童与父母，看着自己居住的建筑被俄方空袭击中版权所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
近几周来，乌克兰已宣布分批接回分别为8人、16人和17人的儿童与青少年群体，以及若干极具戏剧性的个案。
每一次回归都为我们提供了关于那些孩子所遭受境遇的详尽信息，并证实了这一有组织犯罪的结构。
我们谈论的是一种自战争爆发以来持续存在的胁迫性连续性，至少始于2014年。
在一次战俘交换中，博丹科瓦尔丘克也得以回国，他在17岁时试图前往托雷茨克完成学业并获得乌克兰文凭时被俘。在检查站，他被俄罗斯人逮捕并被指控与乌克兰情报部门合作。他在被关押九年后才得以回到家乡。同一次交换中，赫尔松前市长弗拉基米尔米科莱年科）也被释放，他称这次获释是他的第二个生日。
（图：Alla和我在基辅最大的难民点之一报道，那里在俄罗斯空袭期间为乌克兰儿童提供庇护版权所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
将这一切仅简化为人道主义问题，无论多么严重，都是不够的。我们面临的是一场结合领土占领、文化压制、家庭分离、心理胁迫与意识形态塑造的系统性行动。
俄罗斯在乌克兰发动的战争持续时间之长，致使许多被掳走的儿童如今已成年。每一个回归的生命，其意义远超其个人经历本身。它关系到记忆、语言，甚至关乎未来其他孩子作为成人所携带的祖国观念。
（图：Alla和我在哈尔科夫一所学校的废墟上录制了这些镜头版权所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
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