"All civilian prisoners and hostages must be returned, including children," reads one of the points in the original US peace plan for Ukraine.
For Nathaniel Raymond, director of Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL), which is mapping the abducted Ukrainian children, it is a mockery.
If we sign this agreement, we might as well put a bullet in the back of the head of the Geneva Conventions in terms of its ability to protect children in war, even beyond Ukraine.
This means we have a business model that encourages the taking of children hostage. That cannot be allowed.
35,000 children
The exact number of children kidnapped by Russia is unclear. The latest Ukrainian figure, from 2023, is just over 19,000. Raymond and his colleagues' estimates are significantly higher: up to 35,000.
"I don't think most Europeans understand the enormity. This is the single largest kidnapping since World War II, since the Nazi abduction of Polish children," says Nathaniel Raymond.
Using documents, satellite imagery and other open sources, HRL is searching day and night for the Ukrainian children. Some were sent to “summer camps” and never returned home. Some were taken from state-run Ukrainian institutions, such as orphanages, others directly from the battlefield. A fourth group was separated from their parents in Russian “filtration camps” in and around besieged Mariupol early in the war, in the spring of 2022.
To keep himself going, Raymond reminds himself of the pain of the parents and children he has met.
I constantly think of the anguish of a boy who was separated from his mother, whom he last saw wearing a red sweater. So when we get tired, I think: “Red sweater, red sweater.”
"Retraining"
In its latest report , HRL has mapped 210 different locations in Russia and Russian-occupied Ukraine where the kidnapped children have been taken. Some are being held in “family centers” or various types of camps, others in military schools. Some have disappeared into the Russian foster care and adoption system and been forced to become Russian citizens.
In the majority of cases, the children are forced into “re-education” – in effect, Russification – where they are forbidden to speak Ukrainian and brainwashed with Russian patriotism and anti-Ukrainian messages.
An updated draft peace agreement is now on the table, but exactly what it contains is not yet known. For Nathaniel Raymond, it is simple: The children cannot be part of an agreement. Until they are back home, an agreement should not even be discussed.
If this is signed, it means the death blow to the most fundamental principle we have. You are not allowed to have children for the hell of it.
During the course of the war, Russia has kidnapped Ukrainian children and taken them to Russia or Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.
According to calculations from the Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) at Yale University, there could be as many as 35,000 Ukrainian children.
In a September 2025 report, HRL identified more than 200 different locations where children had been taken, including summer camps, cadet schools, nursing homes and a military base. More than half of the locations are run by federal or local governments, according to public data.
In a majority of the identified locations, there are attempts to “re-educate” children to share Russia’s worldview.
What is described as military training and indoctrination is taking place in at least 39 locations. Some of the children are reportedly involved in weapons manufacturing for the Russian military.
In 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for the illegal transfer of thousands of Ukrainian children.
