![\"Liubov](\"https:\/\/s.france24.com\/media\/display\/46543bd4-c49e-11f0-a19c-005056a97e36\/w:1280\/p:16x9\/PHOTO-2025-11-17-17-21-56.jpg\")
\u201cI am a grandmother,\u201d 55-year-old Liubov Burina says, her voice shaking with emotion, before she has to take a moment to calm her nerves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The former seamstress has not seen her grandchildren, Angelina and Yevhen, since March 2022. Due to a family crisis, the three-year-old and one-year-old had been placed in a Kherson orphanage overnight when Russian forces invaded the Ukrainian city. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the morning, when Burina went to collect the children, they were gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe were looking for them everywhere. We contacted every institution, the police and social services,\u201d she says. \u201cThen an organisation found that they had been moved to occupied Crimea.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The children were en route to being deported to Russia and had been listed on one of the country’s adoption databases under new identities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018We are left without any rights\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The exact number of children deported from Ukraine to Russia and Crimea in the aftermath of the full-scale invasion is unknown. Ukraine puts the figure at 19,546<\/a>, although this includes children deported with their parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Russia says it moved the children from warzones in Ukraine for their safety but has refused to provide the Ukrainian authorities with a list of deported minors, as is required by international law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The International Court of Justice in 2023 issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his commissioner for children\u2019s rights Maria Lvova-Belova for the unlawful deportation and transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine into Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read moreMother Russia: Maria Lvova-Belova, the Putin ally deporting Ukrainian children<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n According to research from Yale\u2019s Humanitarian Research Lab, deported children have been taken to at least 210 facilities inside Russia and occupied Ukraine, where the majority of older children are subject to \u201cre-education\u201d<\/a> and militarisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Younger children are more likely to have their identities changed and be put up for adoption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Burina\u2019s grandchildren were typical of the \u201cvulnerable groups\u201d targeted for deportation<\/a>, including orphans, children with disabilities and children from low-income families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe are left without any rights to get them back\u201d, she says, speaking at a rare press conference in Paris, organised by the Emile Foundation which works to reunite Ukraine\u2019s deported children with their families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Next to her, Darina Riepina is also hoping to find her children, Maksym and Margarita,<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m an ordinary mother. I thought we would live an ordinary life,\u201d she says, through tears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Riepina was living with her adopted daughter in Kherson in March 2022 and had started the paperwork to adopt Maksym and Margarita, who were living in a local orphanage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe package of documents for the adoption was almost ready right when the full-scale invasion began\u201d, she says. She has since completed the process, making her the legal guardian of the three biological siblings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Riepina and her eldest daughter were forced to flee Kherson without the younger children when Russian forces invaded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three-year-old Maksym and 10-month-old Margerita were among 48 children taken from the Kherson Regional Children’s Home by Russian forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read more‘Demographic conquest’: Inside Russia\u2019s campaign to indoctrinate kidnapped Ukrainian children<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Locating and returning deported children is a long and complicated process. In Kherson, families had to wait nine months until the city was liberated before there was a local police force to whom they could report their children missing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The search for minors who have been deported is complicated by the fact that investigators cannot travel<\/a> to Russia or occupied Ukraine, and negotiations with Russia are sensitive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Kyiv demanded the release of 339 Ukrainian children<\/a> during negotiations with Moscow in June, Russia said the request was evidence that hundreds rather than thousands of children had been deported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Ukraine, 1,819 children have so far been returned<\/a> from deportation, forced transfers or occupied territories, partly due to the efforts of international mediators such as Qatar<\/a> and the United States<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Riepina and a team of volunteers searched for 10 months before they found Margerita. \u201cIt was the best news just to hear that she was alive,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the joy was short-lived. Her youngest daughter had been moved to Crimea and then to Russia, where she had been adopted by Russian politician<\/a> Sergey Mironov, a key Putin ally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She had been renamed<\/a> and given a falsified Russian birth certificate listing Russian parents, according to a BBC investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moscow has denied Riepina\u2019s demands to have the child take a DNA test to prove her identity and her biological link to her brother and sister, even though Russian and Ukrainian law prefer that siblings be adopted together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In October, Margerita celebrated her fourth birthday. \u201cWe have no connection with her,\u201d Riepina says. \u201cAll we have are the last pictures we saw in the news.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cShe is not a soldier. She shouldn\u2019t be living as a prisoner. Her rights are being violated,” she adds. “She should be free with her family, in her country. Her sister is waiting for her.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She has even less news of Maksym, although Riepina says he has been located in an orphanage in Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alongside her, Burina is desolate that she has not been able to see her grandchildren grow up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy grandchildren are everything to me. Russia shouldn\u2019t have taken them. I hope that they will be returned one day, and we will live in peace,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Family members of Ukrainian children deported from Kherson by Russia made a rare public appeal for their return on Monday in Paris. Since the start of its full-scale invasion, Moscow has deported Ukrainian children into Russia, often sending older children to re-education camps and putting younger children up for adoption…. Continue reading \u2018She should be with her family\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n