Agency says it shared information about children moved to Russia, Belarus or occupied Ukrainian territory with Ukraine\u2019s authorities.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Published On 20 Apr 2026<\/span>20 Apr 2026<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The European Union\u2019s law enforcement agency says investigators have traced 45 Ukrainian children forcibly transferred to Russia, Belarus or occupied Ukrainian territory during the Russia-Ukraine war.<\/p>\n In a statement on Monday, Europol said details uncovered about the children were passed over to Ukrainian authorities to support their ongoing investigations.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Information about the children was discovered using publicly available information known as OSINT (open-source intelligence) during a two-day \u201chackathon\u201d that saw 40 experts from 18 countries, the International Criminal Court (ICC) and non-governmental partners joining forces in The Hague, the Netherlands.<\/p>\n Kyiv has identified 19,546 children who it says were forcibly taken from occupied Ukrainian regions since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbouring country in February 2022.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of these children have been adopted by Russian nationals, while others are being held in re-education camps or psychiatric hospitals,\u201d Europol said.<\/p>\n The list could be far from final, as Ukrainian officials believe that some children lost their parents during the hostilities and cannot get in touch with their relatives in Ukraine.<\/span><\/p>\n Last month, a United Nations international commission of inquiry accused Moscow of committing \u201ccrimes against humanity\u201d by forcibly deporting thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia and obstructing their return.<\/p>\n The ICC has issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children\u2019s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for alleged war crimes involving the unlawful deportation and transfer of children, allegations denied by Moscow, which says it has been evacuating people voluntarily from a warzone.<\/p>\n Russia maintains that it transferred Ukrainian children from captured areas for their own safety and is prepared to return them to their families under conditions it deems appropriate.<\/p>\n The issue is highly sensitive in Ukraine and remains central to every new round of negotiations for a potential peace agreement between Kyiv and Moscow.<\/p>\n \u201cThe aim is genocide of the Ukrainian people through Ukrainian children,\u201d Daria Herasymchuk, a presidential adviser on children\u2019s rights, told Al Jazeera in June 2025. \u201cEverybody understands that if you take children away from a nation, the nation will not exist.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Agency says it shared information about children moved to Russia, Belarus or occupied Ukrainian territory with Ukraine\u2019s authorities. Published On 20 Apr 202620 Apr 2026 The European Union\u2019s law enforcement agency says investigators have traced 45 Ukrainian children forcibly transferred to Russia, Belarus or occupied Ukrainian territory during the Russia-Ukraine war. In a statement on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19709,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Headshot-1-1706763439.jpg?resize=96%2C96&quality=80)
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