Yale report on taken Ukrainian kids cited by senators, denied by Russia

A Russian official dismissed a Yale report about the abduction and forced re-education of deported Ukrainian children as unscientific propaganda.

Since its release in mid-September, a report from the Humanitarian Research Lab detailing the forcible deportation, re-education and militarization of Ukrainian children has played a central role in informing U.S. legislation on the Russia-Ukraine war. The report has received condemnation from the Russian foreign ministry.

“The new report from Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab shows Russia has held kidnapped Ukrainian children at 200+ sites where they are being forced into ‘re-education programs’ and even subjected to military training,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar ’82 of Minnesota wrote in a statement provided to the News by a spokesperson. “We must help Ukraine find these kids and bring them home.”

The report identifies 210 facilities in Russia and occupied Ukrainian territory to which Ukrainian children have been transferred since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, with over half of those sites used for re-education and 18 percent for militarization. It argues that Russia is operating a large-scale, state-driven system aimed at Russifying these children via re-education, military training and long-term detention.

Two days after the report was released in mid-September, Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson from Russia’s foreign ministry, dismissed the report as full of fabrications and based on questionable data, according to a Reuters article.

“They haven’t challenged a single one of the camps,” Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab, said.

The report contained a list of all 210 camps alleged to be holding Ukrainian children. According to Raymond, The lab’s primary source of information came directly from Russian government documents. The report also claims to have at least five independent sources corroborating that children had been taken, for each facility listed.

According to Reuters, Zakharova, the Russian government spokesperson, especially disputed a June estimate from the Humanitarian Research Lab that Russia had illegally deported or forcibly displaced around 35,000 children. Zakharova maintained that only one list containing 339 names of missing children had been provided to them.

Raymond responded that the list mentioned was one of many that had been put forward, and that Russia is responsible under international law to register the children themselves.

“Last month, the Humanitarian Research Lab published the most comprehensive public report yet on the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian kids,” Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa wrote in a statement provided by a spokesperson. “Today, the lab remains a national leader in providing critical resources to locate and track these children.”

Grassley and Klobuchar have been leading an effort to ensure the return of the abducted children since May, when they introduced a bipartisan resolution calling for the return of kidnapped Ukrainian children before any peace agreement is finalized. In June, they introduced a bill in the same vein, to support identification, rehabilitation and accountability for the children.

The senators released a joint opinion piece on the Fox News website, urging the U.S. not to ignore the abductions and citing the Humanitarian Research Lab’s report.

“The evidence collected by the Humanitarian Research Lab and several other monitors that Putin’s regime has kidnapped Ukrainian children, systematically and en masse, is incontrovertible,” Bonnie Weir, a senior lecturer at the Jackson School of Global Affairs and a co-director of the school’s Peacebuilding Initiative, said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Humanitarian Research Lab operates within the Yale School of Public Health.