Mykolaiv, Ukraine · 2020s
Mykolaiv cluster bombing
On 13 March 2022, Russian Armed Forces struck Mykolaiv, Ukraine with cluster munitions, killing nine civilians who were waiting in line at a cash machine.
What happened
During the Russo-Ukrainian war, Russia has forcibly transferred tens of thousands of Ukrainian children to areas under its control, assigning many Russian citizenship, facilitating their adoption into Russian families, and creating obstacles to their reunification with their parents and homeland. Ukrainian authorities have verified the identities of over 19,000 abducted children as part of an online platform called "Children of War," while Russian authorities have claimed that more than 700,000 Ukrainian children had been transferred by mid-2023; Ukraine's ombudsman on children's rights has said the true number could be in the hundreds of thousands.
Deportations began in 2014, with the first large-scale program initiated by Russian charity figure Elizaveta Glinka. Following the 2022 invasion, reports of forced deportations emerged during the siege of Mariupol. Children have been abducted after separation from parents in active war zones, after parents were detained in Russian "filtration" camps or killed, from Ukrainian state institutions such as orphanages and boarding schools, and through so-called "summer camps" in Russia and Belarus, some located as far as Magadan Oblast. Some children detained in these camps were not returned as promised, with return sometimes conditioned on parents traveling to collect them in person — a journey complicated by travel restrictions, cost, and conscription rules barring most men from leaving Ukraine.
On 30 May 2022, Vladimir Putin signed a decree streamlining adoption of Ukrainian children and granting them Russian citizenship, a move Ukrainian authorities have said amounts to legalizing abduction. Russian officials, including children's rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, have described transforming children's Ukrainian identity into "love for Russia." Witness testimony compiled by the UN Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine and by returned children has described poor living conditions, harsh punishment, verbal abuse, and pressure to sing the Russian anthem in the camps; Ukrainian officials have also alleged instances of sexual exploitation.
On 17 March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Putin and Lvova-Belova alleging criminal responsibility for the unlawful deportation and transfer of children from occupied Ukraine to Russia, marking the first ICC warrant against the leader of a permanent UN Security Council member state. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights concluded in March 2023 that the transfers violated international humanitarian law and amounted to a war crime, and legal scholars and organizations including the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights and the New Lines Institute have argued the transfers meet elements of genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention. In April 2023, the Council of Europe passed a resolution deeming the transfers an act of genocide.
Belarusian state-affiliated organizations have also participated in transfers, with at least 2,100 children reported held in Belarusian camps as of August 2023; the EU sanctioned Belarus Red Cross head Dzmitry Shautsou in February 2024 over his role. Diplomatic efforts toward reunification have included the Holy See's mediation through Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, and by November 2025 roughly 1,600 children had reportedly been returned. Russia has maintained it "rescued" children from combat zones and denies wrongdoing.
