Ukraine's Lost Children

RUSSIA TOOK THOUSANDS OF UKRAINIAN KIDS. CAN PEACE TALKS BRING THEM HOME?

- BY SIMON SHUSTER

Vladimir Putin could not make out the names of the missing children that appeared on the screen in front of him.

They were printed in tiny letters, 339 in all, each representing a child abducted from the war zone in Ukraine and, according to authorities in Kyiv, forcibly taken to Russia. Putin had never been confronted with the list in public, and he showed no particular interest in reading it.

It was June 4, a warm day in Moscow, exactly three years, three months, and 11 days since Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine. In keeping with the habit of reclusiveness that he has cultivated during the war, the Russian President convened a meeting of his aides and ministers that day via video call. Their somber faces appeared in little boxes on his screen, while Putin sat at his desk alone.

They had a lot on their agenda. Three days earlier, the war had spilled across the breadth of Russia as the Ukrainians smuggled a fleet of cheap drones across the border and used them to attack several military airfields, damaging or destroying Russian warplanes worth billions of dollars. The next day, Ukraine and Russia held another round of peace talks in Istanbul. Putin now wanted to know how they had gone, and he called on his lead negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, to give the highlights. About two minutes into his report, Medinsky reached for the list of children he had received from the Ukrainians in Istanbul.

“These so-called kidnapped children,” he said. “They were saved by our soldiers, evacuated under fire.” Leafing through the list of names, he added, “We'll have to figure out how many of them are here with us.” Putin gave no response, and the meeting moved on to other issues. Outside of Russia, the abduction of these children is widely seen as a war crime. For the Kremlin, it did not seem like an urgent matter.