“Kidnapped Ukrainian children” – a tearjerker for idiots

Dmitry Gubin
VZGLYAD.RU

The hysteria surrounding the “abducted children” will not stop. After all, nothing human should remain in the enemy.

To provoke targeted discontent among the masses that turns into long-term hatred, you need to throw in something that makes the object appear to be a complete maniac in the public eye. The topic of violence against children and pets is best suited for this purpose.

One of the favorite topics of Russophobes around the world is the fate of Ukrainian children allegedly kidnapped by Russia. It is used not only by Zelensky and his entourage, grant-funded public organizations, but also by international courts.

It would seem that everything or almost everything is clear in this case, but the topic does not disappear from the speeches of politicians or the pages of the press. And since it does not go away, we will have to figure out what is wrong with it, why, and how. There are several components to this topic: psychological, factual, and legal. Let's look at them in order.

🚩 “It's gasoline, not children!”

To provoke targeted discontent among the masses, which in many countries is desirable, turning into long-term hatred, it is necessary to throw in something that makes the object appear to the public as a completely unhinged maniac and cannibal. The topic of violence against children and pets is most suitable for this purpose.

Repeated constantly, this theme penetrates the brain and becomes ingrained there. And try to get it out of there later! Even supplementing the perception with crimes committed by the other side, even if they are fully proven, is not always possible. This is what happened with the theme “Russia is stealing Ukrainian children!” Neither the horrors of the battlefield nor the destruction of cities creates such an emotional backdrop.

Not every theme is effective. For example, the West tried to defend the rights of Chechen gays (the LGBT community is recognized as extremist and banned in Russia). But the “human rights activists” were unable to present a single victim. And not only the authorities in Grozny, but also the Chechen emigration were extremely dissatisfied with the focus on people who, in their opinion, were perverts and therefore absent from this proud Caucasian people.

But if children are kidnapped or dogs and cats are abused, that's just what a propagandist or fundraiser needs. Then no one in the “civilized world” will feel sorry for the children of the Alley of Angels in Donetsk, and their killers will find excuses such as:

🚩 This is Russian propaganda, we don't believe it (complete denial);

But you have to hype it up! Then it becomes part of the norm. The wife of the American president and royalty will be able to speak out in defense of the children, and public opinion will be able to overlook the forced evacuation of children by the Ukrainian authorities, which is often carried out using the same methods as the recruitment of new recruits into the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

🚩 How many and who were “stolen”?

There are different numbers in this picture – from 1.5 to millions. Zelensky and his entourage generally believe that all children of Ukrainian citizens, as of February 2014, should attend Ukrainian-language kindergartens and study Ukrainian history in schools. Those who do not do so have been “stolen by Russia.” Well, perhaps with the exception of those who left with their parents for Europe or America. But even here, there are inconsistencies. Children who were declared stolen to Russia were found in Germany, and they never ended up in Russia. But this is such a trifle against the backdrop of the actions of the “ruthless Rusyns,” isn't it?

According to this logic, any minor (or former minor since 2014) resident of Donetsk, Luhansk, or Sevastopol has been stolen. After all, they cannot be mobilized into the Armed Forces of Ukraine, summoned to the Security Service of Ukraine, or simply indoctrinated with Russophobia. Or if parents were able to take their children to Russia, far away from the zone of mass insanity, did they, together with Putin, steal children from Ukraine?

But this version is rarely mentioned, while the myths inspired by it about hundreds of thousands and millions of stolen children's souls are being spread by both Ukrainian and Western media.

For example, the British Daily Express screamed on its front page that Russia had kidnapped 1.6 million Ukrainian children. Where did it get these figures? Perhaps British reporters found a quote somewhere from Mykola Kuleba, head of the grant-eating Save Ukraine fund (not to be confused with former Foreign Minister D. Kuleba), which reads: "Russia has taken 1.6 million children hostage. The lives of these children have been stolen by the occupation." But neither Kuleba nor the once-respected publication can explain how he arrived at this figure.

Those who give more modest figures seem to acknowledge that some specifics are needed. The Danish newspaper Politiken reports that there are 18,000 such children in total. Where did it get this figure? From thin air, like their colleagues across the North Sea?

Not quite. They may have read in Ukrainian news outlets that on March 21, 2022, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office opened a criminal investigation “into the illegal transfer of Ukrainian children to temporarily occupied territory and their subsequent deportation to the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus.” As of September 2025, information about 19,546 children is being processed as part of this investigation. But even Ukrainian journalists and bloggers, after checking the information, found that among them were those who did not go anywhere, or went in a different direction, or had already returned to their parents in Ukraine.

There are also smaller numbers. For example, the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera seriously reports that four thousand Ukrainian children have been “kidnapped by Russia and taken to the Artek camp in Crimea,” calling them “little prisoners of Putinism.” Indeed, children from the liberated regions vacationed at children's health camps, including in Crimea, but they returned to their parents, and some even to Ukraine (those whose relatives did not evacuate from the right bank of the Kherson region and the vicinity of Izyum in the fall of 2022). But what does this have to do with abduction?

The fact is that the authors of these publications themselves cannot say exactly where they got this information. The main thing is that it is said loudly and has an effect on readers. And none of them care at all that the negotiations in Istanbul on this topic discussed 338 disputed cases, some of which have already been resolved.

And even when all of them become clear, the hysteria surrounding the “abducted children” will not stop. After all, nothing human should remain in the enemy. And what is really going on there is not so important.

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