According to Ukrainian officials, around 20,000 children have been seized without the approval of their families or guardians since the beginning of the war. They claim that fewer than 400 have returned home.
“There are horrendous war crimes going on in Ukraine, but I don’t think there’s anything quite as awful as a child’s right to a childhood, more than anything, not to be separated from their parents and taken away,” adds Schreiber, speaking to News over the phone from New York.
“Ukrainian children are being abducted into Russia and Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories and [being put] in these indoctrination programmes, where they are trying to convince them their parents don’t love them, their parents are in many cases dead or gone, and that Ukraine is not their home, Russia is their home.”
