Daria Kasyanova: “After the Hague order, Russia began to hide information about deported children”

Darya Kasyanova, Head of the Board of the Ukrainian Child Rights Network and Program Director of SOS Children’s Villages Ukraine, told Radio Liberty that at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Ukrainian organizations cooperated with Yale University researchers, passing on information about the illegal movement of children from the temporarily occupied territories.

“I know that they had certain sources to conduct their research, investigations into those children who were taken from the territory of Ukraine, the occupied territories to the territory of Crimea.
For me, as a person who is directly involved in the return of children to the territory controlled by Ukraine, the verification aspect is very important. It’s one thing when we (Ukrainian organizations – ed.) say that our children are abducted, deported, not returned, and it’s another thing when some respected international institutions, research institutes help us verify what exactly happened, confirm that these children were indeed abducted. So from this side, it is definitely a big problem and a big loss,” she emphasized.

Darya Kasyanova also emphasized the importance of a systematic approach to accounting for abducted and returned children. There is an official register of deported children in Ukraine, which is collected by the Ministry of Justice within the framework of the Bring Kids Back UA project, in cooperation with the UMDP.

“The International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Boys and Girls is also interested in making information about illegally displaced teenagers available and verifying their data,” Kasyanova said.

As of 2024, the coalition included 33 countries, including Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, and others.

Kasyanova also noted that Ukrainian organizations are passing on information to international partners about children who have already been returned. But the situation has become more complicated:

“Our organization is not a legal or humanitarian organization, we are an association of organizations working in the field of child protection. Our task is to find this child, return him/her, help him/her adapt and rehabilitate as much as possible.

But now it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to find information in open sources about children who have been deported. Russia used to publish this openly on all its websites, and we monitored it. Now there is not so much information, but this has been happening for several years, after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant, the situation has changed, they began to hide this information as much as possible.”

According to Kasyanova, it is becoming more and more difficult to return minors every year, and the process often takes more than six months. Currently, the organization has 50 active cases – these are children who have expressed a desire to return or are being sought by their relatives.

Read the full article on Radio Liberty ‘s website.