07/03/2026
Bring Kids Back:
Statement by Olga P***l, MD, MBA
President, Southern California Holodomor Genocide Committee
The essence of genocide is to annihilate the identity of a specific national or ethnic group. The most brutal and evil strategy by which to succeed involves assault and erasing identity of the children. At least 20 thousand Ukrainian children have been what the lawyers call “forcibly abducted” into the Russian Federation since the genocidal war against Ukraine began in 2014 and expanded in February 2022. These are the children officially documented by the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab before it was defunded by DOGE. There are concerns that the number is actually higher and this doesn’t include the million plus Ukrainian children in the Russian-occupied east.
Russian have claimed that they are sheltering these innocents from the ravages of war. However, their behavior belies this statement.
The International Red Cross has not been notified to effect return nor communication between the children and their parents. These children are not orphans. They have relatives looking for them urgently. A U.N. Commission has concluded that deportation and forcible transfer of Ukrainian children by russian authorities, plus enforced disappearances amount to crimes against humanity.
Early in 2022, the Russian Federation passed new laws facilitating quick adoption and administrative measures to hasten deportations, transfers, placement of Ukrainian children in russian families and institutions, and establish russian citizenship for Ukrainian minors. Stories from some of the escaped or returned (2,100) children include incidents of trafficking and sexual violence. In one documented case, a 13-year-old girl was r***d. Children are placed in camps and prohibited from speaking Ukrainian. Some of the 13- to 17-year-olds were placed in factories and instructed in how to make drones and other military equipment. Children in the Russian-occupied regions were transported to camps where they were exposed to pro-russian indoctrination and, in some cases, militarized activities described as “patriotic education”, reports Radio Free Europe. The State Department’s 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report found russia recruits or uses child soldiers. Gazprom and Rosneft, russian state-owned energy companies are directly complicit in this.
On March 17, 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin and Maria Aleksayevna Lvova-Belova (Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights) for their direct part in these outcomes. Their actions echo those of the Soviet Russia in their 1932-1933 Holodomor genocide.
There is no light in a nation’s future without one’s children. The unconditional return of the Ukrainian children before finalizing any peace agreement is the mission of Amy Klobuchar’s (D-MN) and Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) Senate Resolution 236.
As a Ukrainian mother, on behalf of all Ukrainian mothers and fathers, I reach out to you for you to reach out to the kidnapped Ukrainian children and bring them back to their family hearth.
https://www.bringkidsback.org.ua/en
www.SoCalHolodomorGenocideCommittee.org
