Russia displays Ukrainian children for adoption on an official website

Journalist María Senovilla warned on ‘De cara al mundo’ about the existence of an official Russian website offering nearly 300 orphaned Ukrainian children, deported from occupied territories, for adoption. 

The platform allows users to filter them by age, physical characteristics or personality, as if they were products. According to Ukraine, more than 19,000 children have been kidnapped since 2022, many with relatives who are claiming them. Some, who are of legal age, have been sent to the front. The International Criminal Court has accused Putin of this mass deportation.

Before we get into the politics, let's look at the harsh reality, if you don't mind. Last week, you explained what is really at stake when it comes to negotiating territories. We are talking about people, families, elderly people, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine has also led to another appalling situation: Ukrainian children who have been kidnapped and are now being offered for sale on the Internet. It is absolutely shameful.

These are orphaned children who have been forcibly deported, as you said, to Russia from the occupied territories of Ukraine, from Donetsk, from southern Zaporizhia, from Kherson, and who are now being displayed in an online catalogue as if they were objects available for immediate adoption by Russian families.

On the website, which is a government website belonging to the Ministry of Education, there are 294 orphans under the age of 17, and families interested in adopting them can filter them by eye colour, hobbies or character, to choose a Ukrainian child à la carte. Human rights organisations have already denounced this aberration as similar to a slave catalogue, saying that the aim is to erase the identity and Ukrainian status of all orphaned children who have no one to protect them there.

We are talking about almost 300 orphaned children, but they are only a fraction of the thousands of Ukrainian children who have been illegally deported to Russia since the large-scale invasion began. This information was revealed a couple of years ago, thanks to an international journalistic investigation, in which Spanish media also participated, and even then it was said that the Kremlin had kidnapped at least 13,000 minors. The Ukrainian government later increased this figure to 19,500. They say that 19,500 Ukrainian minors have been kidnapped by Russia, and most of them have parents or relatives who are claiming them. 

Some of these parents, mainly mothers, who are the ones who can leave the country, have even risked entering Russia to look for their children and bring them back, but this has only been a very small number. Most remain there, and there have been horrific cases of children who, upon turning 18 while on Russian soil, have been forcibly mobilised and sent to the front lines to kill their families, to kill Ukrainians. Melania Trump herself sent a letter to Putin, which was delivered by Donald Trump in Alaska, asking him to leave minors out of the conflict, a request that will probably be ignored by Putin.

In fact, this mass and illegal deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia is one of the reasons why Putin is under arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court. Something that the Russian leader also couldn't care less about.

It is also shocking how Donald Trump changes his mind every five minutes. Now he is encouraging Ukraine to attack Russia when he has been calling for its surrender and for it to negotiate territories for peace. He changes his mind, but also his attitude, depending on what suits him. And the example we can give is the red carpet and ‘the beast’, the limousine for Putin. And a second-rate reception for the Europeans and Zelensky. This should be analysed. 

Yes, yes, that's right. This change of opinion, this statement by Trump that Ukraine should go on the offensive for the Ukrainians, has been taken at face value, because the Russian Ministry of Defence reported this morning that it has shot down 59 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones over nine of its regions.

The Ukrainian attacks also targeted Russian military bases in occupied Crimea and appear to have hit an oil pipeline in the province of Bryansk, which also supplied oil to Hungary, one of the European Union countries that is always putting a spoke in the wheel whenever there is talk of helping Ukraine.

This is the second drone attack carried out by Ukraine this week against military and strategic targets, but the reality is that compared to the massive attacks and bombings that Putin is launching against Ukraine, these Ukrainian drones are almost insignificant. And no matter how much Donald Trump now tells the Ukrainian government to go on the offensive, mounting an effective offensive is not something that can be organised overnight, which seems to be what the US president is now calling for.

But why are Europeans paying for these weapons and buying them from the United States?

That is one of the reasons, but even if Europeans pay and even if Trump is now willing to sell them weapons, it takes time and something else very important, which is human capital. They need men, which we in Ukraine have been denouncing for months as one of the major problems they face, because those who were interested in going to the front volunteered a long time ago and now a mobilisation is taking place that is not going down well with society and is generating recruits who are not as motivated as the Ukrainian defenders who were there at the beginning of the war. 

And to return to the issue of Trump's change of stance, which is important, this change came just after Russia bombed an appliance factory in western Ukraine, near the border with Poland, which belonged to an American company. Zelensky was quick to denounce this attack as deliberate, which would be a slap in the face for Trump just days after he rolled out the red carpet for Putin, because just a week ago, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump met in Alaska, where Trump provided a presidential limousine and a red carpet at the foot of the plane to welcome him with all the honours that he did not bestow on all the European leaders who accompanied Zelensky to the White House last Monday.

Fortunately, at this meeting, unlike the one a few months ago, Donald Trump did not humiliate the Ukrainian president. I think that was part of the reason why some European leaders, Spain was not there, but some European leaders rallied around Zelensky to prevent a situation like this from happening again, but compared to the honours he bestowed on Putin, the White House reception was a bit second-rate. In fact, after the talks, he showed him his collection of baseball caps and a number of other things that he did not do with Putin, with whom he was talking about business, with whom he was talking about exploiting Alaska, with whom he was talking about serious issues and other matters to be taken into account.

This attack in which Russia bombed US facilities was a massive attack with 574 drones and 40 missiles, one of the most powerful in recent months, which, in addition to destroying that factory, destroyed homes, destroyed Ukrainian businesses, killed and wounded people, Ukrainians, and the difference has been that this time it seems to have opened President Trump's eyes. He went so far as to say that if there are no results in two weeks, no Russian moves towards peace, after all these diplomatic efforts being made by the United States, by the West, perhaps a different approach should be considered, because it is very difficult, Trump said, to win a war without attacking the invading country. This is the first time he has uttered these words.

He also added that Ukraine is a great team with a fantastic defence that is not allowed to play offensively. We must remember that Ukraine was strictly forbidden from attacking targets on Russian soil until the end of 2024, just before Biden left the White House, when he gave Zelensky permission to use Atacams tactical missiles against Russia. There have been some attacks, mainly in the north, in the Kursk and Bryansk areas, when Ukraine still occupied part of that territory, but there have been no major attacks on Russian soil afterlife, beyond those carried out with drones.

We do not know if this could now open a new chapter, if weapons could arrive that would enable Ukraine to hit significant targets. Trump's words, this change of heart, are certainly a very important turning point, and we must wait and see, if he does not backtrack in the coming days, if anything is possible.

Furthermore, as if the attack on that American company in Ukraine were not enough, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, is delaying the meeting with Zelensky, and in the meantime, on the ground, Moscow has taken three towns, and the attacks, as you said, have been massive in recent days.

There have been 157 Russian attacks on the front line in the last 24 hours, to give you an idea of the pressure the Kremlin is exerting to seize as much territory as possible from Ukraine before it is forced to stop the war, if that is even possible. But this situation, these intentions, were already anticipated by the Ukrainian government even before Trump met with Putin. It said it had very little faith in this meeting because the attitude of the Russian army on the ground, on the battlefield, was the opposite of what you would expect before negotiations.

In other words, the Russian army is now putting more pressure on, trying to annex and destroy as much territory as possible in order to advance further into Russia. It is not preparing the ground for negotiations. Quite the contrary.

The fact that Trump has given Putin a significant boost by lifting him out of the ostracism and international isolation to which he had been subjected and rolling out the red carpet for him in Alaska has helped Putin to whitewash his image, for propaganda purposes, to sell the photo in his country as if he is winning the war and has also been legitimised. And it is to be expected that the Russian army, far from reversing this situation, from freezing the battlefronts in order to sit down at the negotiating table, I am not even talking about reaching a ceasefire, but freezing the battlefronts, will do the opposite. Putin is far from that position.

Furthermore, Russia has warned that any debate on the security guarantees that the West is considering for Ukraine, which is another key element, but that these guarantees do not take into account Moscow's position, will lead to nothing, of course. We are talking about soldiers on the ground that no one wants to deploy, we are talking about security guarantees in the airspace, but that is very complicated.

Furthermore, Zelensky has countered these demands from Russia and said that the Ukrainian government will do the opposite, that until there are guarantees, they will not cede any territory, nor will they give in to any of Russia's demands, which in most cases are impossible. What Russia is demanding is that Ukraine hand over northern Donetsk, which is the part of Donbass that is still under the control of the Ukrainian government, without a fight, and in exchange it offers to freeze the rest of the front line, i.e. it does not even offer to return any territory in southern Zaporizhia or southern Kherson. What it has proposed is to keep what it has and also be given northern Donetsk. 

This is unfeasible, firstly because 75% of the Ukrainian population does not want to cede territory and this would generate social unrest that would be unacceptable for Zelensky's government. But we must also bear in mind that if this were to happen, if Ukraine were to give the north of Donetsk to Russia, the Russian army would advance in one fell swoop to the border between the Donbass and the provinces of Dnipro and Kharkiv. What would lie ahead would be an expanse, a plain that is very difficult for Ukraine to defend and which would be a launch pad, in Zelensky's words, a launch pad for a new invasion with practically nothing in front of it.

This is because the north of Donetsk, due to its terrain, is much easier to defend than if they manage to advance to the province of Dnipro. Tactical and military experts say that, if this pace continues, no matter how much pressure Russia exerts, it could probably take years to conquer the north of Donetsk by force. And what Putin is asking for is that they give it to him in exchange for nothing.

These are demands that Ukraine is unlikely to be able to meet, and if Putin now maintains his position of going on the offensive, this will not happen. Furthermore, returning to the issue of guarantees, Ukraine is currently reminding everyone that there was already a pact, a guarantee given to the country to preserve its territorial integrity, in 1994 with the Budapest agreements signed by Washington, the United Kingdom and Russia, which have served no purpose and have been nothing more than a dead letter. At some point, if not about Ukraine's accession to NATO, there will have to be talk about Ukraine's accession to the EU. 

And as long as there are no real guarantees and as long as there is no gesture of goodwill from Russia, which is not happening right now, it is impossible for the negotiating table to move forward.