August 12, 2025

Information Cutoff: 1 PM ET, August 11

Karolina Hird, Zachary Yacht, and Andrew Raynus

Russia may be decentralizing adoption programs for Ukrainian children in a manner that will complicate Ukraine’s efforts to track and repatriate its children. Occupied Luhansk Oblast-based media reported on August 7 that the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Ministry of Education and Science launched an electronic database of 294 children “left without parental care.” The LNR database includes pictures of the children, as well as options for people using the database to search for children based on their gender, hair color, eye color, and whether they have siblings. The database describes each child’s personality and overall health, and includes infants under a year old. Russia has routinely used similar databases since its initial 2014 invasion of Crimea and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts to list Ukrainian children who are up for adoption. The practice of using Russian government-run adoption databases continued and intensified following the 2022 full-scale invasion, as found in investigations by the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab (YHLR) and the Financial Times (FT).

Russian government ministries are paying to send Ukrainian children to Russian summer camps, museums, and national parks, likely as part of the broader Russian effort to use such programs to instill pro-Russian sentiments in Ukrainian children. The Russian Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Ministry of Energy have all sponsored trips for children from occupied Ukraine to go to museums, summer camps, and national parks throughout the Russian Federation. The Russian Ministry of Energy claimed on August 6 that 150 children from occupied Horlivka, Donetsk Oblast, visited Moscow and Tver oblasts, including the “Victory Museum” and other World War II monuments. The occupied Kherson Oblast-based branch of Russian outlet Komsomolskaya Pravda claimed on August 7 that the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology sponsored a trip for a group of schoolchildren from occupied Kherson Oblast to attend an ecological camp at “Smolenskoye Poozerye“ in Smolensk Oblast, following a prior trip to the Ugra National Park in Kaluga Oblast.

The Donetsk Oblast occupation administration is preparing to leverage Ukrainian youth into reconstruction projects in order to offset labor costs and build youth buy-in for the occupation. Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Head Denis Pushilin claimed on August 7 that Donetsk Oblast occupation authorities are using the Russian Student Brigades organization to increase the rate of infrastructure construction in occupied Donetsk Oblast. The Russian Student Brigades is an all-Russian public youth organization in which students participate in labor across multiple economic sectors, including healthcare, teaching, farming, and construction across Russia.

• Russia may be decentralizing adoption programs for Ukrainian children in a manner that will complicate Ukraine’s efforts to track and repatriate its children.

• The emergence of the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Ministry of Education and Science-run adoption database listing Ukrainian children is an inflection compared to previous Russian efforts to centralize and streamline adoption processes under the federal database.

• Russian government ministries are paying to send Ukrainian children to Russian summer camps, museums, and national parks, likely as part of the broader Russian effort to use such programs to instill pro-Russian sentiments in Ukrainian children.

• The Donetsk Oblast occupation administration is preparing to leverage Ukrainian youth into reconstruction projects in order to offset labor costs and build youth buy-in for the occupation.

• Russia is using the new “Align with Heroes” program to further its efforts to indoctrinate and militarize children in occupied Crimea.

• Russia continues to use oblast-level offshoots of the federal Time of Heroes program to curate a loyal and military-minded civil servant class in occupied Ukraine.

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