Russia has created an online “catalog” with 294 Ukrainian children residents of the Luhansk region, which is under Kremlin occupation, which allows the user to filter out profiles from minors by age, gender and even specific physical characteristics such as eye and hair color. The platform, which is currently controlled by the Local Education Department under Moscow command, displays photos, health data and even descriptions of children’s behavior, such as “obedient”, “calm” and “disciplined,” according to report Euronews.
Although presented in the “catalog” as “orphaned and without parental care”, most of these children were born in Luhansk and had a family before the Russian occupation, as well as Ukrainian citizenship, said Mykola Kuleba, director of the NGO Save Ukraine.
“The parents of some of these children were killed by the occupation authorities, others received Russian documents to legitimize the kidnapping,” he said in a publication in X.
Kuleba states that Moscow has practiced the transfer of minors to Russian families since 2014, but after the large-scale invasion of 2022, the operation became “wide and systematic”. He accuses Kremlin of changing laws to allow change of surnames and dates of birth, erasing the Ukrainian identity.
“Now a minor can be ‘commissioned’ online, receive Russian passport and undergoing ideological control with a single click,” he said.
The NGO warns that public exposure of these profiles puts minors at risk of sexual exploitation, human trafficking, illegal adoption and even organ trafficking. Kuleba classifies the practice as “state -sponsored child trafficking” and says “Russia is no longer trying to hide it.”
“On official platforms, Ukrainian orphans are displayed as products on an online market. Full face photos, age, eye color, health and even ‘obedience’. “No child should be reduced to a clickable profile. No child should be deprived of their identity and forced to forget who it is.”
The case is one of those who motivated the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue an arrest warrant against dictator Vladimir Putin, accused of illegal transfer from Ukrainians to Russia during the war.
According to the Ukrainian government, at least 19,500 children were forcibly deported to Russian territory, only about 1,350 were returned, with the help of countries such as Qatar, South Africa and the Vatican. Yale’s Humanitarian Research Laboratory estimates that the actual number is close to 35,000, while Moscow claims that it could reach 700,000.
