Authors: Karolina Hird

Data cut off: 3 pm ET, July 30

ISW's Russian Occupation Update tracks the activities that occur in the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. The Occupation Updates examine Russian efforts to consolidate administrative control of annexed areas and forcibly integrate Ukrainian citizens into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems. This product line replaces the section of the daily Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment covering activities in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.

To read ISW’s assessment of how Russian activities in occupied areas of Ukraine are part of a coerced Russification and ethnic cleansing campaign, click here.

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Ukrainian military intelligence obtained additional evidence confirming the scale of Russia’s forced removal and deportation of Ukrainian children. Ukraine’s Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported on July 30 that it hacked into the servers of the Crimean occupation administration and found documentation of the names and locations of Ukrainian children who Russia has deported since 2022. The GUR noted that it found evidence that Russia has illegally appointed new guardians to Ukrainian children and resettled them in Russia with adopted families. The evidence documents, that the GUR posted, confirm that several children from Kherson, Donetsk, and Luhansk oblasts born between 2008 and 2016 are attending several schools in occupied Crimea—suggesting that Russia has likely forcibly removed these children from their homes in occupied areas of Ukraine and relocated them to occupied Crimea. The GUR also posted at least one document that appears to be an adoption form for a five-year-old child from occupied Kherson Oblast. The Ukrainian government has confirmed Russia’s deportation of 19,546 Ukrainian children to date, but independent organizations like the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab place the true number closer to 35,000. ISW continues to assess that Russia’s deportation of Ukrainian children is systematic, intentional, and likely a violation of the Geneva Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which classifies the forcible transfer of children of one group to another group as a constituent act of genocide.

Key Takeaways:



• Ukrainian military intelligence obtained additional evidence confirming the scale of Russia’s forced removal and deportation of Ukrainian children. Russia’s deportation of Ukrainian children is systematic, intentional, and likely a violation of the Geneva Convention, which classifies the forcible transfer of children of one group to another group as a constituent act of genocide.

• Russia is investing heavily in the eradication of Ukrainian children’s identities as a core tenet of its occupation policy. Inordinately high expenditures on indoctrination programs indicate that the erasure of Ukrainian identity is a policy priority for the Russian state.

• Russian officials continue to publicly discuss the deportation of Ukrainian children to various summer camps and educational programs within Russia.

• The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is increasingly investing in Russia’s occupation of Luhansk Oblast. Russia likely hopes that PRC investors will offset some of the economic and financial obligations that the occupation has imposed.

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