Ukraine’s Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets presented his office’s third special report on Russia’s crimes against Ukrainian children, titled Resilient, he said on Telegram on 10 November.

Moscow has long claimed it removed Ukrainian children from danger on humanitarian grounds. But children who remain under Russian occupation face other forms of coercion. Occupation authorities have detained children and opened criminal cases against them for disloyalty, and the first have already been convicted, according to Lubinets. Some end up in Russian military uniforms. For children still living under occupation, showing disloyalty to the occupation authorities can mean criminal punishment.

Parents detained, children prosecuted

Parents are detained automatically when their children refuse to sing the Russian anthem, Lubinets said at the presentation, Ukrinform reported. Detention starts with so-called conversations, which are often accompanied by torture. Families the occupation authorities consider especially disloyal face criminal cases, and so do children, he said.

“We have verified data that criminal cases were also opened against children who showed particular dislike, so to speak, of the occupation authorities. They were detained, and there are already the first cases of Ukrainian children being convicted by the Russian occupation authorities,” Lubinets added.

In his Telegram post, Lubinets described two boys from occupied territories. One, born in 2007, disappeared during the occupation and later appeared in a Russian military uniform. The other, who was 16 at the time of the occupation, ended up in a camp for Russian prisoners of war and told Lubinets he had no choice.

The cases fit a wider pattern. In September, an occupation monitor described militarization starting in kindergarten. A week later, Ukraine brought home a teenager from Kherson Oblast who was being put on Russia’s military rolls.

Russia’s count and Ukraine’s

At the start of 2022, about 1.6 million Ukrainian children in occupied territories were at risk of deportation, forced transfer, and militarization, Lubinets wrote. In 2022, several Russian sources stated that more than 744,000 Ukrainian children had been taken to Russia, he said, as Ukrinform reported. Ukraine has verified 20,651 children as cases of deportation or forced transfer. The Bring Kids Back UA initiative has returned 2,798 children so far, Lubinets wrote.

Lubinets wants everyone involved sanctioned

Every Russian involved in deporting, transferring, or militarizing Ukrainian children belongs on sanctions lists, Lubinets said, according to Ukrinform. Meanwhile, Canada sanctioned eight Russians over the deportations in September. A month later, the Netherlands began funding a UN search for the children.

Lubinets wrote that the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine confirmed his office’s 2023 finding that the so-called “evacuation” of children was unlawful. In March 2026, the Commission found that Russia’s deportation and forcible transfer of Ukrainian children amount to crimes against humanity, based on more than 1,200 cases it verified.