Le Monde

By Faustine Vincent (Special correspondent in Kyiv)

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/11/06/it-s-like-they-re-coming-out-of-a-cult-ukraine-tackles-russian-indoctrination-of-repatriated-children_6747195_4.html

To date, 1,762 Ukrainian children have been repatriated after being forcibly transferred by Moscow. Ukrainians are working to de-indoctrinate them and are warning that today, all children living under occupation, Russified and militarized, are being torn from their country without even having to be physically deported.

In three and a half years of full-scale war, Oksana Lebedeva thought she had seen everything. But since she began caring for children repatriated to Ukraine after being forcibly transferred by Russia, the founder of the NGO Gen. Ukrainian discovered an even darker side of the conflict. “Their behavior is very different from children traumatized here by the conflict,” she explained. “When they come back, after being indoctrinated by Russia, they don’t speak, don’t play, don’t trust anyone and don’t even look at you.” One aspect particularly surprised her: “They are all extremely docile. That shocked us. They are ready to give everything and behave like little soldiers.” She gives each child a notebook to write about their experience. One boy took a red marker and wrote in large letters: “Top secret.”

To date, 1,762 Ukrainian children have been repatriated out of the 19,546 identified by Ukrainian authorities as having been deported to Russia or forcibly transferred within occupied territories. Moscow began mass transfers of these children at the beginning of its invasion in February 2022. Since then, Ukraine has worked to recover these “stolen children,” some of whom were adopted by Russian families, with Moscow erasing their identities by changing their names and dates of birth, and moving them around frequently. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, for the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children. That same year, Russia boasted of having “welcomed more than 700,000 Ukrainian children.”

The fate of these children torn from their country has provoked international outrage. But the threat has now grown, insist Ukrainian officials overseeing the issue. “The situation is much worse than at the start of the invasion,” warned Maksym Maksymov, project manager for the Bring Kids Back Ukraine program, created by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to coordinate efforts by the government, partner countries and international organizations to return “kidnapped” children. “Today,” Maksymov explained, “1.6 million Ukrainian children live in occupied territories and in Russia. Moscow is indoctrinating them with the same goal: to change their identity.” He said it’s important not to “focus solely on the figure of 20,000 deported children, because even if we manage to bring them back, it won’t solve the problem. Today, Russia doesn’t even need to physically transfer children to tear them from Ukraine; it does it psychologically and mentally.”

‘War machine’

Young Ukrainians are a prime target for the Kremlin. To erase their identity and turn them into future soldiers under its command, Moscow subjects them to forced re-education, Russification and militarization beginning in elementary school. “Whether the children are in Russia or in the occupied territories no longer has any impact on the level of indoctrination, it is the same everywhere,” noted Yulia Sidorenko, head of the Save Ukraine center in Kyiv, which assists repatriated minors. With this indoctrination, “deportation has become a process” affecting all Ukrainian children living under Russian control, according to Olena Rozvadovska, founder of the organization Voices of Children. “The Russians are brilliant at brainwashing,” she sighed. “It’s a war machine designed to make them hate anything Ukrainian.”

The methods used at times resemble laboratory experiments, particularly in “filtration camps,” giant checkpoints set up by Moscow in occupied territories and in Russia to control and filter Ukrainians trying to leave, where they may be detained for months. “A young girl told me that when the Russians showed them videos of Ukraine in these camps, it was cold, they were hungry and it smelled bad,” recounted Natalia Masiak, a psychologist at Voices of Children. “But when they showed videos of Russia, they handed out cookies, the atmosphere was comforting and it was warm.”

Daria Herasymchuk, the Ukrainian president’s commissioner for children’s rights and rehabilitation, regrets that indoctrination is “not taken seriously enough” by international bodies. “Yet it’s a burning issue that represents a considerable threat.” She cited the case of Ugandan commander Dominic Ongwen. Kidnapped and indoctrinated by the rebel LRA group as a child, he was sentenced by the ICC in 2021 to 25 years in prison for crimes against humanity. “That’s why we must immediately save all our children,” Daria Herasymchuk insisted, “and not wait until they all turn against Ukraine.”

Oleksandr (a pseudonym), 19, spent three and a half years under Russian occupation in Dniprorudne, in the Zaporizhzhia region, before managing to escape in August. This young Ukrainian, who was tortured by Russian security services (FSB) for two months for forming a small resistance group, described how the environment radically changed since 2022. “Russia is everywhere, on the radio, on flags. Staying there without having your brain melt is extremely difficult,” said the student, now living in Kyiv. “Young people are particularly affected. The effect of propaganda is so powerful that even those who were against Russia are starting to believe it. Even 14-year-olds don’t really remember what life was like in Ukraine [before the Russians arrived].”

Oleksander (who is using a pseudonym) was subjected to interrogations, electric torture, psychological pressure and imprisonment by Russian forces for two months when he was only 16 years old, in the occupied territories of Zaporizhzhia. In the offices of the Bring Kids Back Ukraine organization, in Kyiv, October 4, 2025. VIRGINIE NGUYEN HOANG/HUMA FOR LE MONDE

The more traumatized a child is, the more receptive they are to propaganda and the easier to manipulate. “That’s why the Russians create this trauma, by completely isolating the child, hammering home the message that no one is coming to get them and that no one needs them,” explained Myroslava Kharchenko, co-founder of the humanitarian organization Save Ukraine, which searches for, repatriates and rehabilitates abducted Ukrainian children. “It works very well: The child, broken, feels abandoned. The Russians empty them of their identity and values, and replace them with others.”

Adoptions for payment

Ksenia Koldin, 21, saw the effectiveness of this method on her younger brother, who was forcibly transferred to Russia in August 2022 at age 11 from Vovchansk, one of the first Ukrainian cities to be occupied, in the Kharkiv region. As a student, she had to fight to get him back. When she finally found him in May 2023, the boy, placed with a Russian foster family, initially refused to go with her. “He told me his life was now in Russia, that he had friends there and that Ukraine was a bad and dangerous country. I was desperate,” recounted the young woman, her black hair pulled back and face grave. She spent three and a half hours trying to convince him. “His foster family and the Russian school had completely brainwashed him. Then, I had a stroke of genius and told him: ‘OK, but I’m your sister, I love you, I missed you a lot, so let’s just go for a month.'” Since then, her brother has been cared for in Ukraine and has not gone back to Russia.

Upon their return, all repatriated children are questioned by a psychologist about their experience. Hidden behind a one-way mirror, representatives from Ukrainian security services, the prosecutor general’s office, the police and child protection services pass along their questions. The information gathered helps to better understand Russian methods. After spending up to three months in filtration camps, the youngest and healthiest children are adopted by Russian families, who receive the equivalent of $200 per month (€173) and sometimes take in seven or eight children. “These families aren’t interested in the child, but in the money,” explained Masiak, who has conducted about 50 interviews. “Many adoptive parents threatened the children: ‘If you don’t obey, we’ll tell everyone you’re Ukrainian. You’ll see what happens to you.’ There are many cases of abuse.”

The de-indoctrination of children repatriated from Russia and the occupied territories is a complex process, and a step considered necessary for their rehabilitation. “We have to ‘deprogram’ them because, among those who have returned, some believed that Ukraine no longer existed and that Russia had won the war,” explained Kharchenko. Others display strange reflexes. “An 18-year-old boy, rescued from Russian-controlled territories, went to the Kyiv memorial honoring fallen soldiers. Seeing all the Ukrainian flags, which are banned in occupied zones, he suddenly began singing the Russian anthem.” Police intervened, believing it was a provocation, and opened a criminal investigation. “We had to prove he had suffered a psychological breakdown,” Kharchenko added.

So far, most of the Ukrainian children who have been repatriated are teenagers who wanted to return and have not been completely brainwashed by propaganda. “But the longer children stay in occupied territory, the harder it will be to help them when they return and to convince them everything was false,” said Rozvadovska. Aware of the scale of the challenge, specialists in de-indoctrination are developing different methodologies.

‘Deprogramming’

The approach used by the Save Ukraine NGO, developed in collaboration with clinical psychologists, neuropsychologists and Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv, has a telling name: “deprogramming.” This involves preparing the environment for repatriated children by training their teachers, classmates and community to restore trust and help them feel “expected.” That is not always the case today. After being harassed in Russia, where they were accused of starting the war and being responsible for the death of a father or brother killed at the front, some are sometimes harassed upon their return to Ukraine, where they are criticized for not leaving earlier or for not speaking Ukrainian well.

The specialists in charge of these children are careful not to use the same violent methods that the Russians used to indoctrinate them, favoring instead a “gentle” and individualized approach. “But it will take years for them to readjust, because it’s like they’re coming out of a cult,” observed Masiak. Ukraine has sought advice from Finland, which is working to reintegrate children from the Islamic State. “At first, these children refuse to leave Syria, but after leaving the camp, their perception changes. That gives us hope,” said Maksymov.

Ukrainians know the hardest part is yet to come and that time is against them. Not only because tracing the youngest becomes almost impossible, but also because the longer the war lasts, the more children trapped in Russia and occupied territories grow up believing they are Russian and that Ukraine is the enemy, undermining any deprogramming efforts – if they ever return at all.

Anticipating these difficulties, the authorities launched a national campaign in the spring, “Let’s Bring Ukrainian Children Home,” to collect the DNA of families whose children were transferred to Russia and create a database. “That way, if these children come back in 10, 20 or 30 years, they can be identified,” explained Maksymov. “It will allow us to prove what happened.” And help these Ukrainians discover their true story.