Overview

Journalists from The Kyiv Independent conducted an investigation and spoke with relatives and guardians whose children were on the verge of being sent to Russia. Bypassing the front line, their loved ones traveled through several European countries to Donetsk to pick up their children and prevent them from being transferred to Russian families. The journalists also identified a group of children who were deported to Russia last spring under the guise of a health retreat at the Polyany resort. They were promised to be returned in a month, but instead were placed in the care of Russian families. Ukrainian collaborators who remained working on the Russian side in 2014 were involved in the deportation of this group of children.