The return of Ukraine’s stolen children

Reflections on ‘After the Rain: Putin’s Stolen Children Come Home’, a film by Sarah McCarthy

Last month, I watched ‘After the Rain: Putin’s Stolen Children Come Home’, a documentary directed by Sarah McCarthy about Ukrainian children who were abducted to Russia and brought back by their parents or grandparents. This moving film shows how these children and their parents followed a programme in Estonia aimed at healing the wounds caused by their forced stay in Russia, at least to some extent. The children and their parents spent ten days at a woodland retreat, close to the sea. They held conversations with each other, assisted by psychologists, with dogs and horses playing a role in the therapy too. Little by little, the parents let down their guard and the children started talking about their experiences in orphanages and foster homes in Russia, far away from their parents who feared for their well-being.

As a viewer, you closely follow the experiences of Veronica (14) and her grandmother Vera, and those of Sasha (7) along with her father Yvgeny and her older brother and sister. At the end of the stay, the parents and children are asked to put something dear to them into a little box. Sasha wonders how she can get her family into the box – after all, they are her most precious possession.

The film is about the healing process the children and their parents go through. You see hardly anything of what happened to the children in Russia, but still the film leaves a crushing impression. I was particularly struck by the resilience of the children and their parents, the humanity and compassion of the counsellors, and the silent, faithful presence of the animals. But you constantly feel the deep, deep wounds inflicted on the children by their abduction and stay in Russian institutions, far away from parents and family. These are visible wounds – expressed by Veronica who seemed to get a little closer to her feelings while riding a horse. Ultimately, though, she’s left with ‘a deep void’. The wounds were visible and aptly expressed by 14-year-old Veronica, who seemed to get a little closer to her feelings while riding a horse, but was ultimately left with ‘a deep void’.

The film’s director Sarah McCarthy, along with the producers, families and counsellors, calls for attention to the nearly 20,000 children abducted from Ukraine since the Russian invasion of February 2022. She believes that these children and their families have received too little attention and should be part of peace negotiations, especially now that the President-elect of the United States, Donald Trump, has announced peace talks between the Russian Federation and Ukraine.

Indeed, we need to talk more about these children. Out of nearly 20,000 children, only a little over 1,000 have returned. All the other children are still in Russia or in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories. There is no clear picture of the whereabouts or well-being of these children. What is clear, is that the children and their families are victims of gross violations of international law. A recent report by Yale University concludes that ‘the Russian Federation has engaged in the systematic, intentional, and widespread coerced adoption and fostering of children from Ukraine’.

Just over a year after the invasion of Ukraine, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against President Vladimir Putin and the Russian children’s ombudsperson Maria Lvova-Belova specifically for the illegal transfer and abduction of children from Ukraine to Russia, a war crime. Earlier this year, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child addressed the Russian Federation on the abduction of Ukrainian children and called on the Russian authorities to return the children and end the flagrant violation of their rights and freedoms. Indeed, various children’s human rights, as protected by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, are affected by this unlawful Russian interference in the lives of Ukrainian families. These include the right not to be separated from parents, the right to be reunited with parents, the right to maintain one’s identity and nationality, and the right not to be subjected to unlawful deprivation of liberty and cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment.

But lately, our attention has drifted away from Ukraine to focus more on other parts of the world, especially the Middle East. And of course there are many other conflicts that demand our attention, and some of them are taking place in complete anonymity. In all these conflicts, children and families often suffer the most. This film, however, shows that Russia is using the abduction of children as a weapon of war and that this is causing huge damage, with lasting impact on children and families across generations. An unprecedented injustice is happening in Ukraine and in Russia, and we need to pay attention to it.

So, I call on the Dutch and other governments to put this issue back on the international, European and national political agenda. At the same time, we must do all we can to support the institutions, civil society organisations and volunteers who are working tirelessly to reunite these children and their parents and help them come to terms with their suffering. We must also contribute to the gathering of evidence against the Russian authorities so that those responsible will ultimately be held accountable. We simply owe it to all the stolen children.

A shorter version of this blog was published in Dutch as an op-ed in the Dutch newspaper Trouw.

Photograph: Copyright © 2024 Sarah McCarthy’s ‘After the Rain: Putin’s Stolen Children Come Home’ (published with permission).