Dec. 3 (UPI) — Russia is engaged in genocide by abducting Ukrainian children and forcing them to adopt Russian culture, several U.S. senators said and heard during a hearing on Wednesday.
The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs convened the hearing, called “The Abduction of Ukrainian Children by the Russian Federation,” to better determine if there is a legitimate concern that Russia has taken tens of thousands of children since invading Ukraine in early 2022.
Subcommittee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., opened the hearing by questioning peace talks that don’t address the matter of child abductions by Russian forces.
“Our Ukrainian allies claim 19,546 reports of unlawful deportation and forced transfer of children from the occupied areas of Ukraine by Russia,” Graham said.
“How can you end the war, unless every child is accounted for?” he asked rhetorically.
“The purpose of this hearing is to make a record as to whether or not this claim is legitimate.”
Graham said he invited Russian Ambassador Alexander Darchiev to the hearing, but he did not attend.
“You cannot honorably end the conflict unless you account for every child taken by Putin’s Russia from Ukraine, period,” Graham emphasized.
Ranking Member Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said the reported abductions of Ukrainian children are a “global concern” and that senators, regardless of party affiliation, support efforts to “track and return children and hold perpetrators accountable.”
Schatz said: “Any peace plan that lets [Russian President Vladimir] Putin walk away with having illegally seized territory, kidnapped thousands of children and caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people on both sides with no consequences is unacceptable.”
“It would set a very dangerous precedent for the world, not to mention undermine future peace in the region,” he added.
The abduction of Ukrainian children is “literally genocide because the ultimate goal of abducting these children is to erase their Ukrainian identity,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said. “It is part of a strategic effort to erase the nation of Ukraine from existence.”
Given a lack of progress in peace talks, he recommended moving forward with a sanctions bill against Russia and declaring the country a state sponsor of terrorism.
Democrat Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota traveled to Rome 12 days ago and met with several families and children who escaped Russian captivity while attending an event hosted by Pope Leo XIV.
One boy was rescued by his grandmother, who entered Russian-occupied territory after he found a cellphone that he used to call her, Klobuchar said.
Another girl was held for two years, sometimes in isolation, while she was 13 and 14, until she managed to escape her Russian captors.
Klobuchar said more than 1,800 children had been returned from Russian captivity, some with the help of the Vatican.
Researchers have identified 3,200 sites in Russia where Ukrainian children, ranging from ages 1 to their teens, are kept, she added.
The subcommittee also heard from Ukrainian Ambassador Olga Stefanishyna.
“These children have been subjected to pressure to change their names, their language, their identity, and even their citizenship,” she said.
Since the beginning of Russia’s full‑scale aggression, Stefanishyna said “thousands of Ukrainian children have been forcibly taken from their homes, separated from their families or removed from orphanages and foster care institutions in the temporarily occupied territories and transferred to Russia or Belarus in violation of international law.”
“This is not a humanitarian evacuation,” she added. “This is an attempt to erase who they are and where they belong.”
Mykola Kuleba of Save Ukraine told the subcommittee that at least 20,000 children have been abducted by Russia.
“They have then been militarized or deported to Russia and trafficked into Russian families,” Kuleba said.
“The Russians have made it very difficult to track our children. They are stripped of their names, birthdates, language, faith and families.”
He said the effort by Russia is a “deliberate strategy to erase their identities and Ukraine’s future.”
“More than 1.6 million Ukrainian children are now imprisoned behind Russia’s new iron curtain that has descended across Ukraine,” Kuleba explained.
“They are indoctrinated to believe that the U.S. and NATO are the true enemies, which they have to fight — now and forever.”
Kulebal in December 2022 told the U.S. Helsinki Commission that Russian forces had taken more than 13,000 Ukrainian children “under the guise of an alleged evacuation,” The Hill reported.
He said many were adopted by Russian families, who are paid between $300 and $2,000 every year to raise them.
Others who testified included Maksym Maksymov of Bring Kids Back, Kateryna Rashevska of the Regional Center for Human Rights, and Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health.
British officials have helped to find more than 600 Ukrainian children who had been abducted and taken to Russia, according to The Times.
Among those children, 295 had been sent to the Russian Federation, and 71 were put in the custody of Russian citizens.
Another 242 children were found through profiles listed on adoption websites.