BRUSSELS — The European Union on Monday imposed sanctions on 16 Russian officials and seven centers involved in the abduction and forced assimilation of Ukrainian children, a move that targets figures and facilities the bloc says are responsible for deporting, indoctrinating, and placing tens of thousands of minors for adoption. The sanctions, which include asset freezes and travel bans, were announced as the EU co-hosted a 47-nation coalition meeting to increase diplomatic pressure on Moscow.
“War has many faces, but stealing the children is one of the most horrific,” EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos told the gathering. “We should stop this, and Russia should pay.”
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, about 20,500 children have been unlawfully deported or forcibly transferred to Russia or Russian-held territories in eastern Ukraine, according to EU officials. Many are stripped of their Ukrainian identity, given Russian passports, and put up for adoption. Some are sent to schools for military or ideological training — what EU headquarters described on Monday as “indoctrination and militarized education.”
The 16 officials sanctioned include government representatives, military youth-training commanders, and heads of children’s camps. One of those named, Lilya Shvetsova, runs the “Red Carnation” camp in occupied Crimea, where the EU says she supervises activities “aimed at shaping the political and ideological views of children present at the facility, including Ukrainian children.”
More than 130 individuals and entities now face EU travel bans and asset freezes over the abductions. The new sanctions specifically target “those responsible for the systematic unlawful deportation, forced transfer, forced assimilation, including indoctrination and militarized education, of Ukrainian minors, as well as their unlawful adoption and removal to the Russian Federation and within temporarily occupied territories,” the EU said.
Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braže described Russia’s actions as an attempt to erase the children’s nationality and identity. “When you look at the Genocide Convention, it’s one of the features of the genocide crime,” she said. “So it’s very serious.”
The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes, accusing him of personal responsibility for the abductions. The ICC action, combined with the EU’s expanding sanctions regime, reflects mounting international legal and diplomatic pressure on Moscow over the transfers.
Efforts to return the children have moved slowly. Around 2,200 have been brought back, Ukrainian and EU officials say, but identifying those taken at a very young age is particularly difficult. Some of the children who have returned face prolonged adaptation periods. Ukraine has set up reintegration programs, but the process of verifying and tracing the children remains complex.
“The International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children,” co-hosted by the EU and Canada on Monday, was aimed squarely at rallying more countries behind the effort and at reinforcing the diplomatic machinery to track and reunite families. The 47 nations in attendance endorsed a statement urging Russia to comply with international humanitarian law and permit independent monitors access to the children.
For the EU, the sanctions and the diplomatic push are two tracks of the same strategy: to raise the financial and reputational cost of the abductions while simultaneously building an international mechanism that can force the children’s return. Union officials acknowledged, however, that the path from sanction to repatriation will likely be long, and that tens of thousands of children remain effectively beyond reach without Russian cooperation — which Moscow has so far refused to provide.