I treat Ukrainian children stolen by Russia – Musk was wrong to axe rescue team ...Middle East

Messy pots of paint lie over the table, as a dozen busy children use brushes to create their own works of art.

A familiar scene to any parent – but given a closer look, some of the paintings bear details that are deeply troubling.

One has a word carefully written across the top in black paint, “UNCERTAINTY”. Another child has scrawled the word “FEAR” on a piece of red paper.

These children are at a special camp in Ukraine, set up by non-governmental organisation Gen.Ukrainian, to help the young people most traumatised by the war with Russia.

This group, now learning to express their emotions through art, were taken by Russian troops and forcibly transported across the border, or were forced to live under occupation.

Some saw their parents killed in front of them. 

A week ago, The i Paper revealed a US team helping to find abducted children was axed under Donald Trump’s administration.

The US government had been funding the specialist team based at Yale University.

But this team, which helped locate hundreds of children, has had its funding paused, amid tech tycoon Elon Musk’s chainsaw slashing of the federal budget via the so-called department of government efficiency (Doge).

The founder of the Gen.Ukrainian therapy camp has spoken out about why that decision will have harmful consequences. 

Oksana Lebedeva, the organisation’s CEO, said the work of the Yale Humanitarian Lab gave her “hope”.

“What [the Lab] showed us was amazing work. I had hope. Their work is crucial. It is vital for our society,” she said.

“I was just devastated when I heard there was a possibility the work was deleted.”

The Lab’s investigators had recently tracked down 314 children taken from Ukraine and spread across Russia. These children were between the ages of two and 17.

The Lab researchers were abruptly shut off from their computers in January.

Questions have been raised about what happened to their files recording potential war crimes, forcing the State Department to deny the evidence had been deleted.

Conservative estimates from Ukraine claim around 19,500 children were abducted and transferred into Russia.

Around 1,240 children have so far been repatriated, according to Bring Kids Back UA, an initiative launched by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to rescue children from deportation and occupation.

Lebedeva assembled a team of psychologists, researchers, sociologists and educators to help create Gen.Ukrainian in 2022 to look after children most impacted by the trauma of war.

Last year, they took in a group of 46 children who had been abducted or forced to live under occupation.

These children told of alarming experiences, such as being stripped naked by their captors and physically searched.

Children and teenagers who were forced to live under Russian occupation or were abducted and taken across the border convalesce at the camp (Photo: Gen.Ukrainian)

Not many details can be shared about these children, for both privacy and security reasons. But Gen.Ukrainian shared with The i Paper a previously unreleased report from the team’s psychology team.

“This group of children and teenagers have manifested symptoms of profound emotional trauma,” it stated.

It detailed how the children carried signs of trauma: their muscles were constantly tense in a psychical reaction to their prolonged experience of fear, their minds have been manipulated to make them obey any command from an adult without question, their personalities have lost the fun and innocence of childhood.

They have even developed cognitive delays.

The trained obedience of the children shocked Lebedeva and her team the most as it was not something they had observed in the previous groups of Ukrainian children who had not been captured by the Russians.

“This kind of unquestioning obedience is highly unusual for children of this age, especially for teenagers,” Lebedeva said, remarking that, for example, when they informed the children the camp is a smartphone-free zone there are usually a lot of complaints. This group of 46 complied immediately.

“They are conditioned to obey any command from an adult without question. They bow when greeting, as if an adult is someone you have to please and fear injury from,” she recalled.

“They were afraid to be late. They avoided eye contact. They didn’t play. They didn’t enter into conflicts with each other.”

‘Trembling with fear’

Most of the group of 46 children don’t want to share their stories with strangers.

After time at the camp, where they can access group and individual therapy, physical equipment to help muscle tension, and play sessions to help rediscover fun, some feel ready to talk.

Max*, now 17, watched his father die after he was beaten by Russian troops. “He was lying [on the floor]. I started doing chest compressions, but I wasn’t sure how to do it right, and he died right in front of me,” he said.

Others shared how they were treated. Anna*, 15, said: “I was trembling with fear but [the soldiers] assumed I was trembling because of the cold.

“They thoroughly searched both me and my mother. They undressed us themselves, waist high.”

Alina*, 16, has been left unable to cry. “I have no plans for the future ahead because I am broken into many little pieces. I can’t really think about the future when I can’t leave the past behind,” Alina said.

The younger children talked about school and their unhappiness at singing the Russian national anthem and having to read new textbooks that preached of the glory and strength of Russia compared to the weakness of their homeland, Ukraine.

“They stole the childhood from our children,” Lebedeva reflected. She worries that when they grow into the next generation of adults, they could become future perpetrators of violence because many of the children have feelings of revenge.

“We try to give them different ideas on how to cope with what they have to live with. Instead of their hatred of Russians, [we focus on] love to the dead parents. It’s a totally different perspective, and that’s why we call our program sheltered by love.

“Even these children who were abducted opened up [by the end]. They were crying, they were hugging, they showed love. They were able to talk and that’s how love works.”

Putin’s war crimes

Vladimir Putin and Russian children’s commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, have been formally accused by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of the deportation of children, which is a war crime.

The Kremlin denies wrongdoing, claiming they are helping “abandoned” children.

Data that could support the legal case proving Russia is committing war crimes against these children was gathered by the Yale Lab, which was in formal evidence sharing agreements with the ICC and was in the process of transferring data to Europol.

The transfer of that evidence was stopped when the Lab’s Ukraine work was axed by Musk, Trump’s billionaire tech tycoon advisor, under his efforts to slash the federal budget via the so-called department of government efficiency (Doge).

The i Paper asked Lebedeva, who has suffered her own tragedies in the war, if she had a message for the US president, who has the power to overturn the funding cut.

She said: “I believe childhood has to be protected at all cost. The future prosperity of any country rests on the wellbeing of its children.

“To rescue and help the wellbeing of Ukrainian children is an investment to the world.”

*Names have been changed to protect the children’s identities.

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