Carney accuses Putin of abducting thousands of Ukrainian children

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Prime Minister Mark Carney accused Russia of stealing Ukraine’s children as he addressed the United Nations on Tuesday to mobilize global support for the return of minors abducted during the war.

He joined Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss how Moscow has taken and forcibly deported at least 19,000 Ukrainian children to Russia or Russian-occupied territories since the start of its full-scale invasion of its neighbour in 2022, according to Ukrainian and international organizations.

The practice began in 2014 with Russia’s invasion and annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. In 2022, it escalated into mass deportations of children, including from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Carney told the UN audience that Russia is not only holding young Ukrainians, but trying to erase their identity and turn them into Russians with no ties to their homeland.

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Canada and Ukraine co-founded the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children in 2024. More than 40 countries have since joined.

The coalition has presented Russia with an initial list of 339 children “that must be brought home today,” Mr. Carney said.

“Children are being falsely labelled with Russian citizenship and passports,” the Prime Minister told a UN event being held on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

“A decree to fast track the citizenship process for abducted children has been signed by Putin himself.”

Mr. Zelensky said Russia is stonewalling his country’s appeals for the repatriation of Ukrainian children.

“Maybe not everyone here is a parent, but everyone knows how quickly children grow, how precious every moment is,” he said. “One of the lowest crimes imaginable is to replace childhood with war and its cruelty.”

He urged UN member states in every sanctions package targeting Russia to “increase the pressure on those Russian politicians, official judges, propagandists and others involved in child abductions and their attempt to reprogram their minds.”

Detention facilities (previous used as):

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Hotel/resort

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Orphanage

Healthcare facility

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FINLAND

RUSSIA

Yekaterinburg

St. Petersburg

Moscow

Novosibirsk

KAZAKHSTAN

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Yunarmiya headquarters

Areas under Russian control

RUSSIA

Kyiv

UKRAINE

Donetsk

Luhansk

Melitopol

Kherson

Crimea

Sevastopol

Satellite photo of Russia’s ‘Yunarmiya,’

or Youth Army, facilities in Melitopol,

occupied Ukraine

Yunarmiya HQ, Melitopol

Church

Gas station

Refrigerator factory occupied by the Russian forces

Earthworks first visible in May 2022 appear to be trenches dug to train soldiers for combat situations.

MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE:

HALA SYSTEMS; PLANET LABS PBC; OPENSTREETMAP

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Yekaterinburg

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Yunarmiya headquarters

Areas under Russian control

RUSSIA

Kyiv

UKRAINE

Donetsk

Luhansk

Melitopol

Kherson

Crimea

Sevastopol

Satellite photo of Russia’s ‘Yunarmiya,’ or Youth Army,

facilities in Melitopol, occupied Ukraine

Yunarmiya HQ, Melitopol

Church

Gas station

Refrigerator factory occupied by the Russian forces

Earthworks first visible in May 2022 appear to be trenches dug to train soldiers for combat situations.

MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE:

HALA SYSTEMS; PLANET LABS PBC; OPENSTREETMAP

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RUSSIA

St. Petersburg

Yekaterinburg

Moscow

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headquarters

Sevastopol

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Russian control

Satellite photo of Russia’s ‘Yunarmiya,’ or Youth Army, facilities in Melitopol, occupied Ukraine

Yunarmiya HQ, Melitopol

Church

Gas station

Refrigerator factory occupied by the Russian forces

Earthworks first visible in May 2022 appear to be trenches dug to train soldiers for combat situations.

MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: HALA SYSTEMS; PLANET LABS PBC; OPENSTREETMAP

FINLAND

RUSSIA

St. Petersburg

Yekaterinburg

Moscow

Novosibirsk

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Sevastopol

Areas under

Russian control

Satellite photo of Russia’s ‘Yunarmiya,’ or Youth Army, facilities in Melitopol, occupied Ukraine

Yunarmiya HQ, Melitopol

Church

Gas station

Refrigerator factory occupied by the Russian forces

Earthworks first visible in May 2022 appear to be trenches dug to train soldiers for combat situations.

MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: HALA SYSTEMS; PLANET LABS PBC; OPENSTREETMAP

FINLAND

RUSSIA

St. Petersburg

Yekaterinburg

Moscow

Novosibirsk

BELARUS

UKRAINE

KAZAKHSTAN

Detention facilities (previous used as):

School

Healthcare facility

Camp

Orphanage

Hotel/resort

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TURKEY

Yunarmiya

headquarters

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Russian control

RUSSIA

Kyiv

UKRAINE

Luhansk

Donetsk

Melitopol

Kherson

Sea of

Azov

Black Sea

Crimea

Sevastopol

Satellite photo of Russia’s ‘Yunarmiya,’ or Youth Army, facilities in Melitopol, occupied Ukraine

Yunarmiya HQ, Melitopol

Church

Gas station

Refrigerator factory occupied by the Russian forces

Earthworks first visible in May 2022 appear to be trenches dug to train soldiers for combat situations.

MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: HALA SYSTEMS; PLANET LABS PBC; OPENSTREETMAP

Canada is providing $2-million to Hala Systems, a company whose products are designed to help civilians in conflict zones. The money, Mr. Carney said, will support the use of technology driven by artificial intelligence “to aid in locating and identifying Ukrainian children who have been unlawfully deported.”

The illegally held children are being indoctrinated and even prepared to fight Ukraine, the Prime Minister said. “Secondary schools are required to send lists of students aged 18 and older who are eligible for conscription into the Russian armed forces.”

“Each of these inhumane acts are violations of international law,” he added.

Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, has called what’s happened “the single-largest kidnapping since World War Two.”

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The Ukrainian government’s official count of missing children, published in 2023, is at least 19,000, but Mr. Raymond has said rough internal estimates by his organization suggest as many as 35,000 have been abducted.

“Russia has repeatedly targeted the most vulnerable groups of children, including orphans, children with disabilities and children from low-income families.”

Russian soldiers have entered classrooms and forcibly rounded up children, taking them to Russian schools and orphanages.

The Canadian government, in a statement accompanying Mr. Carney’s remarks, said Moscow has sought to impose Russian citizenship on the abducted children and restricted their access to the Ukrainian language and history, as well as alternative sources of information.

In 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, citing reasonable grounds to believe they each bear responsibility for the war crime of “unlawful deportation of population [children] and that of unlawful transfer of population [children] from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”

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Diana Fox Carney, the Prime Minister’s spouse, spoke at the UN about the case of Illia, a nine-year-old boy taken from his home in Mariupol after his mother was killed in front of him. Russian soldiers took him to Russian-occupied Donetsk, where doctors performed an operation to remove a fragment from his leg, she said.

“Illia describes these doctors trying to turn him into a propaganda tool, telling him he must no longer say ‘Glory to Ukraine’ but, instead, ‘Glory to Ukraine as part of Russia.’”

Illia’s grandmother, who learned of his location when she saw him in a Russian Federation video, was able to secure his return with assistance from government and non-governmental organizations, Ms. Fox Carney said.

“But the suffering he has endured cannot be undone. As his grandmother describes, he had a school, he had a home, he had a mother and he lost all of that – his entire childhood.”