Why is nobody talking about the ... abducted Ukrainian children?

Why is nobody talking about the ... abducted Ukrainian children?

By Steven Moore and Colby Barrett, Op-ed contributor

Christian Post, 
Russia has abducted more than 19,546 Ukrainian children during its invasion of Ukraine. Some of those children have been forcibly adopted into Russia; others languish in a series of 43 camps spread across Russia and Russian-occupied territory. The majority of those camps are focused on "re-education," military training, or both.

For us, these stories aren't abstractions. In the course of shooting our upcoming documentary "A Faith Under Siege: Russia's Hidden War on Ukraine's Christians," we've met these survivors and victims in person. We interviewed Rostyslav, a Ukrainian orphan boy that escaped from a Russian military camp, where he was kept in solitary confinement. We also met Nadiia, a mother who had a gun held to her head in front of her children while members of the Russian Guard tortured her husband in the next room. With a tip-off from her pastor, the family escaped from Russian-occupied Ukraine just days before her oldest child was set to be taken from them and sent to one of these Russian-controlled indoctrination facilities. Her story is here.

Wars rarely spare children, and Russia's is no different. In the course of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has so far killed 669 children and injured 1,854, with an average of 16 additional child casualties added to that tally every week. Child casualty rates have risen as the war drags on because Russia targets residential areas with missiles and Iranian "Shahed" drones, an effort that ramped up after President Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election.

Casualties, including child casualties, occur during war. But the abduction of children is not common and indicates a zeal to destroy a people itself. Hamas, as part of their goal to destroy the State of Israel, abducted 30 children during their October 7, 2023 attack. The worldwide outrage that followed was visceral. The Sun put the faces of each child on their cover.

Sadly, the scope and scale of the abduction of Ukrainian children is so much worse, and, while the motivations may be similar, the international outcry has been muted. The Ukrainian government has identified 19,546 children who have been abducted. According to Russian authorities, if you include the number of Ukrainian children taken into Russia accompanied by their parents, that number swells to over 730,000. That's up to 24,000 times more disastrous than what happened in Israel, while The Sun covered the story, it didn't even make the front page.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio made it clear where America stands when it comes to abducted children in a March 15, 2025 speech to G7 leaders: "We're sitting around as the world, sort of accepting that it's normal and okay for you to go into a place, kidnap babies, kidnap teenagers, kidnap people who have nothing to do with any wars, that are not soldiers … it's ridiculous, it's sick, it's disgusting."

While Secretary Rubio was referring to Hamas' abduction of Israeli children, the administration seems to have taken notice of Russia's abduction of Ukrainian children. On March 19, the White House released a statement from President Trump's phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In it, Secretary Rubio and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz noted that President Trump "asked about the children who had gone missing from Ukraine during the war, including the ones that had been abducted. President Trump promised to work closely with both parties to help make sure those children were returned home."

This follows a March 11 Joint Statement on the United States-Ukraine meeting in Saudi Arabia issued by the White House, where Ukraine agreed to a 30-day ceasefire if Russia also agreed to it. In that statement, "The delegations … discussed the importance of humanitarian relief efforts as part of the peace process, particularly during the above-mentioned ceasefire, including … the return of forcibly transferred Ukrainian children" (emphasis added).

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