If You Capture the Children, You Capture the Future

Every year on June 1, the world recognizes International Children’s Day. It’s a day dedicated to protecting children, defending their rights, and remembering our responsibility to future generations.

For most people, childhood represents safety, family, education, curiosity, and the freedom to maintain the youthful belief that you can grow up to achieve your dreams. But under Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship, children are increasingly being taught a very different lesson: that loyalty matters more than truth, obedience matters more than conscience, and the state has the right to decide what a child is allowed to think.

This is not an accident. Authoritarian governments have always understood that controlling the next generation is the key to preserving their own power. If you capture the children, you capture the future.

Today, Russian children are growing up in a country where opposing a war can make them criminals. The Memorial’s Support for Political Prisoners project released a report, “Politically Motivated Persecution of Minors in Russia,” highlighting how the Russian regime is increasingly targeting children. The report documents 427 known cases of politically motivated criminal prosecution of minors, with 299 children having been deprived of their liberty. Today, 107 children remain behind bars as a result of politically motivated persecution. These are not just statistics—they are children whose futures are being stolen by a system that treats dissent as a crime.

The cases reveal the absurdity and cruelty of the system Putin has built, such as:

Other young people have been targeted for poetry, music, and words. Darya Kozyreva faced persecution after speaking against the war and expressing solidarity with Ukraine. Kevin Lick, a Russian‑German teenager, was convicted of treason at seventeen before being released as part of a prisoner exchange.

These young Russians are not enemies of their country. They are examples of what Russia should want its children to become: thoughtful, courageous, and unwilling to accept injustice.

As a Russian, I reject the idea that their compassion is betrayal. To me, a country that punishes children for opposing war is not protecting its future. It is destroying it.

But the Kremlin’s attack on children does not stop at Russia’s borders. Ukrainian children have paid an even more devastating price for Putin’s aggression.

According to verified international data, hundreds of Ukrainian children have been killed and thousands injured since Russia launched its full‑scale invasion in February 2022. The real number is almost certainly higher because many cases in occupied territories cannot be independently confirmed.

And we must remember: for Ukrainian children, this war did not begin in 2022. It began in 2014, with Russia’s occupation of Crimea and its war in eastern Ukraine. An entire generation has grown up under the shadow of Russian aggression. Some Ukrainian children have never known peace.

Throughout history, children have always been among war’s most vulnerable victims. Ukraine is no exception. But in Ukraine, beyond the missiles, destroyed schools, and lost lives, Russia has committed another, insidious crime: the forced transfer of Ukrainian children from occupied territories and into Kremlin‑run orphanages.

The Kremlin calls this humanitarian assistance. We should call it what it is.

Children have been removed from their homeland. Some have been given Russian citizenship. Some have been placed into Russian families. Some have been taught that the country they came from is their enemy.

This is not humanitarian assistance. There is nothing humanitarian that require erasing a child’s identity, replacing their history, and separating them from their language, culture, and family.

The Kremlin is not carrying out these actions without consequences, and there’s hope a price will be paid for the cruelty they are inflicting on the families of the missing children. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova‑Belova, over allegations involving the unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children.

The significance should not be overlooked. The first ICC warrant against Russia’s president was not only about bombs, missiles, or destroyed cities. It was about children.

Children forced into Kremlin‑run orphanages are being “adopted” by Russian families. And not just any family. According to investigative reporting, State Duma politician Sergey Mironov and his wife adopted a Ukrainian child taken from Kherson and brought her into his family and given a new identity. So we don’t forget, her name is Margarita Prokopenko, but she was taken by Mironov and his wife Irina, given a Russian passport and renamed Marina Mironova. She has a new birthplace listed as a Moscow suburb to erase her Ukrainian heritage. Mironov denies the allegations, but the reports are from credible sources.

The reporting around this case raises a disturbing question that applies to every child removed from Ukraine: Who has the right to decide that a child’s past no longer exists?

For anyone who still views this only as a political issue, let’s make it personal.

Imagine your child taken across a border by a foreign army. Imagine another government deciding your child’s citizenship, language, education, and identity. Imagine searching while wondering whether your child is being told that you abandoned them.

That is not a humanitarian program.

That is an attempt to break the bond between a child, a family, and a nation.

A destroyed building can be rebuilt. A bridge can be rebuilt. Even cities can rise again. But stealing childhood is stealing time itself. The years taken from these children cannot simply be returned when the war ends. No peace agreement can restore the memories, family moments, and sense of belonging that were stolen. There are no reparations for stealing the youth of a nation.

Putin’s regime claims it is defending children and traditional values. But there is nothing traditional about taking children from their families. There is nothing protective about imprisoning teenagers for their beliefs. There is nothing patriotic about teaching children that compassion is weakness and obedience is virtue.

Putin is trying to destroy Ukraine’s future. And he is destroying Russia’s future as well.

There are Russian children today who were born after Putin came to power. They went through kindergarten, school, and their entire childhood knowing no other leader. Some reached adulthood, some were sent to fight in his war, and many have died while the same man remained in the Kremlin.

On this International Children’s Day, we must remember all children harmed by this war, especially Ukrainian children killed, wounded, displaced, and taken from their families; and Russian children punished because they refused to surrender their conscience.

The future of both nations will belong to these children long after Vladimir Putin is gone. Our responsibility is to ensure that the crimes committed against them are documented, remembered, and ultimately punished.