Yale researchers traced hundreds of children taken to Russia in the war, finding what they described as “a higher level of crime than first understood.”
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and senior Kremlin officials “intentionally and directly” authorized a program of coerced fostering and adoption of Ukrainian children during the war in Ukraine, according to a Yale University report that was released on Tuesday.
The report provides strong new evidence for a war crimes case against Putin and other officials, the researchers said.
An investigation by Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab identified 314 children from Ukraine who have been placed in a “systematic program of coerced adoption and fostering” since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, according to the report. It details evidence of direct orders from senior Russian officials, including Mr. Putin, to carry out the adoption program.
“It reveals a higher level of crime than first understood,” the Research Lab, which is part of the Conflict Observatory, a program supported by the U.S. Department of State, said in a statement.
Yale’s investigation could bolster the case against Mr. Putin and his commissioner for children, Maria Lvova-Belova, who were named in an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in March last year for their roles in the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.
The researchers cited what they said were verified leaked Russian documents that they said revealed how senior Russian officials had worked with officials in the occupied regions of Ukraine to carry out the program. The report says the Russian president’s office provided direct financial support and other assets for the program.
The treatment of the Ukrainian children may constitute a war crime or crimes against humanity, and could even support a case of genocide under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the Research Lab said.
Ukrainian officials and members of the Yale research team are scheduled to appear before a special meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday to explain their findings, the statement said.
The Kremlin has denied committing war crimes, and maintains that the adoptions are a patriotic and humanitarian effort to help abandoned children. It has also noted that is not a party to the I.C.C. and therefore has no obligations under it.
The State Department has condemned Russia’s treatment of Ukrainian children in the war, and in August announced new sanctions on several entities and individuals over the “forced deportation, transfer and confinement of Ukraine’s children.”
In addition to Mr. Putin and Ms. Lvova-Belova, the Yale report names four other Russian officials over roles in the deportation, fostering and adoption of Ukrainian children: Anna Kuznetsova, a senior official in Mr. Putin’s United Russia party; Sergei Kravtsov, Russia’s education minister; and the heads of regional pro-Russian administrations in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk Provinces.
The evidence gathered by the Yale researchers concerns 314 children aged 2 to 17, from Donetsk and Luhansk Provinces in eastern Ukraine, many of whom were removed from two well-known boarding schools. The group also includes one child from the occupied city of Mariupol.
The report said it had established with high confidence the Ukrainian origin of the children, independent of other investigations and news reports. The researchers said they had used multiple sources of information to corroborate information, including leaked Russian documents and communications, satellite images, geolocation techniques and metadata analysis.
That investigative work aimed to establish both the logistics involved in moving the children and the chain of command behind the program, it said.
Donetsk and Luhansk Provinces have been largely under Russian control since 2014, when Russian-backed separatists first seized power there. Russia declared the annexation of the provinces in 2022, and moved to integrate their Ukrainian institutions into the Russian system.
Some of the 314 children have been placed into Russian families, and others were listed on a Russian database for fostering and adoption, Yale’s report said. The university did not release the children’s identities but said it had passed their names and circumstances to the international court and the Ukrainian authorities.
While some of the children are orphans or had previously been removed from the care of their parents, some according to database files had parents in Ukraine who have been deprived of their parental rights by Russia’s actions, the report said. At least three children have been placed in families of Russian officials or Russian military families, it said.
The researchers said they had tracked the movement of each of the 314 children to temporary facilities in Russia at midpoints in their deportation and their dispersal after that across 21 regions of Russia. The report said that Russian military planes were used in the transporting of the children, which was widely reported in Russian news footage and photographs.
The researchers said that they had documentation that at least 67 of the children had been naturalized as Russian citizens, and that the true number of such naturalizations was probably much higher.
The Yale researchers said they had not been able to pursue all leads or to find and identify all of the children on Russian placement databases. They said there were thousands more Ukrainian children in Russia who had yet to be identified.
The report also accused the Russian authorities of working to conceal the origin and whereabouts of the Ukrainian children. After the international court issued its arrest warrants, Russia removed much of the evidence from relevant websites, the report said.
“Russia engaged in acts of deception to conceal the full scope of this program and related activities,” the report said. “Most critically, children taken from Ukraine are fundamentally presented in Russia’s databases as if they were from Russia.”
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