Operations without anesthesia and children’s torture chambers: how Russians abuse kidnapped Ukrainian children

Darya Gerasimchuk, the authorized adviser to the President of Ukraine on children’s rights, spoke about how the Russians abuse kidnapped Ukrainian children.

According to her, several hundred thousand children who were illegally and forcibly “evacuated” by the Russians have now been identified. The real number of forcibly removed Ukrainian children cannot be established, because Russia does not provide complete information.

According to official information, Russia deported more than 19,000 children, only 327 of them were returned. “The Russians are trying to destroy the future of Ukraine, erasing children’s identity and belonging to the Ukrainian nation,” Gerasimchuk believes.

Darya Gerasimchuk notes that the Russian Federation creates such conditions in the temporarily occupied territories that are completely unsuitable for children to live in, so that they can then be forcibly removed from Ukraine.

“The biggest goal of the Russians is actually the genocide of the Ukrainian people through Ukrainian children. Children’s citizenship is changed, they are handed over for illegal adoption, under the care and custody of citizens of the Russian Federation,” says Gerasimchuk.

The authorized adviser to the president is convinced that the Russians have a clearly defined plan, their actions are not chaotic: “when they entered the territory of Ukraine, they knew what they wanted to do with Ukrainian children.”

Russians kill and physically injure children, not only with massive rocket attacks. It is also about wounding and killing children directly from small arms at close range. They also kidnap children and commit sexual violence against them.

“To date, there are at least 13 documented such cases, but we understand that this is only the beginning,” says Gerasimchuk.

Darya Gerasimchuk says that the rescued Ukrainian children talk about the terrible things that the Russians did to them: “the Russians try to put psychological pressure on the children, to mutilate them as much as possible. Psychological trauma is often exacerbated very strongly and is difficult to heal over the years. We all remember the children’s torture chamber and the boy Vitalik, who was abused for 10 days.”

There are known cases when, during their stay in Russian infiltration camps, children were taken from their parents and given to Russian families.

“Sasha, whom we managed to return to his grandmother, said that he was separated from his mother during the filtering and the child was told that his mother did not need him, that she would not come for him and that he would now become a decent Russian in a Russian family.” says Gerasimchuk.

The authorized adviser to the president spoke about the case of the Ukrainian boy Ilya, who was admitted to a Russian hospital. The child was operated on without anesthesia.

However, sometimes the Russian authorities give Ukrainian children to foster families, where Russians are afraid of Ukrainian children.

“16-year-old Serhiy, who was in a foster family for 8 months, talked about how his foster parents used to lock themselves inside their room at night because they were afraid that he would just chop or stab them. That is, they were afraid of him,” says Gerasimchuk.

The Russians force Ukrainian children to learn the Russian language, culture, history, love Putin and thank him for their salvation.

“Children who were in Russian camps talk about how they were forced to stand up during the national anthem of the Russian Federation, sing, and if they didn’t do it, they were locked in a room. No one was loyal to their pro-Ukrainian position, to their desire to return home, they tried to oppress them as much as possible,” says Darya Gerasimchuk.