Meduza’s publishing house has released Stolen Childhood, a book by journalists Nina Nazarova and Sviatoslav Khomenko....

Forwarded From Meduza — Books

Meduza’s publishing house has released Stolen Childhood, a book by journalists Nina Nazarova and Sviatoslav Khomenko. It tells how Russia abducts Ukrainian children — and how Ukrainians bring them home

Since the start of the full-scale war, thousands of Ukrainian children have ended up in Russia. Some were taken from occupied territories deep into the occupying country, often under false pretexts, such as a trip for an excursion. Others could escape the combat zone only through the Russian border. And some were sent by their own parents farther away from danger, to Russian children’s camps — and then could not be picked up.

The Russian authorities are doing everything to make sure the children cannot, or do not want to, return home: they give them new names, find them new families, issue them new citizenship through an expedited process, and teach them a new history. In 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague recognized the removal of children from Ukraine as a war crime.

In Stolen Childhood, journalists Nina Nazarova and Sviatoslav Khomenko collected four stories of families who became victims of this crime, and also described in detail those who organized the removal of children — and those who are still helping bring them home.

Here is what the authors themselves say about the book

Nina Nazarova:

Our book is a translation of the legal term “unlawful deportation” into human language. These are the stories of four families and four very different scenarios of how children were separated from their relatives and how difficult (and sometimes impossible) their path home was. These are stories of human — and children’s — strength of spirit, unbroken even by the most unpredictable circumstances.

Whatever happens at the front and in negotiations, thousands of Ukrainian children are already living as Russians, their identities have been changed, their citizenships rewritten. In any case, this is a story with a long tail, a plot that will make itself felt in the years and decades to come — simply because people live long lives, and such traumas rarely heal without a trace. Our book is a first attempt to show and comprehend what happened. To show it through the example of specific people, their fates, adventures, and suffering: it is important to remember that behind any figures announced by officials stand living children, each of whom deserves to be close to loved ones and grow up in peace in their homeland.

Sviatoslav Khomenko:

The tears of a woman from Balakliia whose teenage son did not return from a children’s camp; Vladimir Medinsky’s boorish remarks about the children stolen by Russia; new school programs for Ukrainian children in the occupied territories; the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin — these and many other details, as the book was being written, came together into one big picture. A picture that simply cannot be ignored or pushed into the background compared with other, more obvious, perhaps, consequences of the war unleashed by Russia.

If this book helps draw the world’s attention again to the children who can still be helped, then we did not write it in vain.

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The book Stolen Childhood, released by Meduza’s publishing house with the participation of the StraightForward Foundation, can be purchased at this link.