Ninety-one member states in the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution demanding that Russia “immediately, safely and unconditionally” return all Ukrainian children that have been forcibly taken within the occupied territory of Ukraine by Russia and those deported to the country from Ukraine since the conflict began in 2014.
The United States voted in favor with 90 other countries (many European), while Russia and 11 others voted against the resolution, which was non-binding. China and 56 countries, mostly from Africa and Asia, abstained, although South Africa voted yes for the first time on an Assembly resolution favoring Ukraine in the war.
“This is a real victory for Ukrainian diplomacy, but also the global community, in a complicated geopolitical climate,” said Mariana Betsa, the deputy foreign minister of Ukraine, to PassBlue after the vote on Dec. 3. “The return of Ukrainian children should be part of a peace plan.”
Betsa said that Russia’s attempts to try to undermine the resolution — pressuring global South countries not to vote in favor — failed. “Russia and its proxies are against returning children. That speaks volumes,” she added.
The resolution, adopted by a two-thirds majority, is the first by the General Assembly, under its 11th emergency special session on Ukraine, to directly address the return of children by Russia amid its invasion of its neighbor.
The United States, which is leading peace talks between Russia and Ukraine over the war, did not speak before or after the vote to explain its position. The talks are reportedly expected to continue in Miami on Dec. 4.
The president of the General Assembly, Annalena Baerbock, opened the special session by vividly describing how children were yanked from their homes by Russian soldiers. “They tried to break me in every possible way,” Baerbock said, quoting Vladislav Rudenko, a 16-year-old Ukrainian boy abducted from his home in Kherson, southern Ukraine, in October 2022.
The resolution, drafted by Ukraine, Canada and the European Union, urges Russia to stop all legal and administrative measures to cement the transfer of more than 700,000 Ukrainian children taken since 2014, calling the transfers clear violations of the Geneva Conventions. The text also condemns Russia fast-tracking citizenship for Ukrainian minors and warns against forced adoptions, changes of personal status and indoctrination.
Andrii Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister, said in an X post on Dec. 1 that Russia has deported more than 19,000 Ukrainian children since 2022 — when Russia fully invaded the country on Feb. 24 — calling the actions a war crime. He added that 700 children have been killed, 2,000 injured and 2,245 are still missing amid the violence since 2022.
More than 19,500 Ukrainian children were taken from Mariupol, a major southern Ukrainian port city, devastated in the early months of Russia’s 2022 invasion, and the surrounding Donetsk oblast.
Arrest warrants
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, commissioner for children’s rights in the office of the president, on March 17, 2023. The court accused them of committing the war crime of “unlawful deportation of population (children)” and the “unlawful transfer of population (children)” from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia. The warrants remain outstanding.
On Dec. 1, 2025, Olena Zelenska, the first lady of Ukraine, said on X that her country has managed to return 1,859 children, but they have needed psychological rehabilitation due to trauma from beatings, indoctrination and separation.
A Russian representative who spoke at the General Assembly session before the balloting on Dec. 3 said that a vote against it was a “vote for peace,” as she questioned the timing of the resolution amid the current US-led peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
She also rejected claims that her country forcibly adopts Ukrainian children or strips them of their identity, arguing that minors without guardians are placed under temporary custody and that Russian citizenship procedures for refugees are voluntary. She also disputed the number of children that have been taken as stated by the Ukrainian government.
“For several years, we’ve heard the figure of allegedly 20,000 deported children,” Russian Deputy Permanent Representative Maria Zabolotskaya said. “This figure has not changed. It is not substantiated by any notes, lists, and no surveys from families or parents. This is a propagandistic, [a] well known method, the real situation, the resolution completely distorts the real situation.”
Zabolotskaya dismissed the accusations of forcible deportation of Ukrainian children as “a particularly cynical lie” and called the draft resolution a “web of lies.”
The fully fledged war in Ukraine that ignited when Russian tanks rolled over from Belarus into Ukraine in February 2022 has defied all diplomatic and multilateral attempts to broker a ceasefire. On Dec. 2, Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy negotiating the latest potential peace deal, was joined by Jared Kushner, a son-in-law of President Trump, in a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss the proposal that surfaced on Nov. 20.
The meeting in Moscow was described as “constructive” but ended with no agreement or ceasefire arrangement, according to Yuri Ushakov, a Russian top diplomat.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, has reiterated that his country remains open to a ceasefire and peace negotiations but only on terms that respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity, among other red lines. The US 28-point peace plan that emerged last month sparked immediate controversy after some European leaders — who were left out of the formulation — described it as a Russian wish list and expressed skepticism about Russia’s commitment to peace. The plan included sweeping concessions that Ukrainian and its European backers said overly favored Russia.
It proposed, for example, that Ukraine would renounce NATO membership, cap the size of its military at 600,000 troops and agree to territorial changes that would freeze the frontline as the de facto border. That gave Russia control over Crimea, the entire Donbas region and large parts of the occupied Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. The plan also proposed lifting certain sanctions on Russia, reintegrating it into global economic structures (like the G8) and using frozen Russian assets for Ukraine’s reconstruction under a US-led Ukraine Development Fund.
However, according to news reports, the plan has been revised to amend some of the controversial demands, like the cap on military size and territorial concessions, after a series of negotiations between Kyiv and Washington were held recently in Geneva and in Miami, Florida. The plan remains an active document as no agreement has been reached since the Moscow visit by Witkoff and Kushner this week, and disagreements over Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and future status remain unresolved.
Kyiv’s lead negotiator, Rustem Umerov, has been invited back to Miami by Witkoff and Kushner, to continue talks on Dec. 4.
“We are absolutely committed to peace,” Betsa said to PassBlue. “It’s critical that Ukraine get strong, robust security guarantees. Without them, it will be difficult for Ukraine to deter Russia in the future.”
The first step, she added, is an initial ceasefire, but Russia “is not willing to do this first step.”
We welcome your comments on this article. What are your thoughts on the Ukrainian kidnapped children?
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Damilola Banjo is an award-winning staff reporter for PassBlue who has covered a wide range of topics, from Africa-centered stories to gender equality to UN peacekeeping and US-UN relations. She also oversees all video production for PassBlue. She was a Dag Hammarskjold fellow in 2023 and a Pulitzer Center postgraduate fellow in 2021. She was part of the BBC Africa team that produced the Emmy-nominated documentary, “Sex for Grades.” In addition, she worked for WFAE, an NPR affiliate in Charlotte, N.C. Banjo has a master’s of science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and an undergraduate degree from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria.
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Without provisions controversial for Ukraine on limiting armed forces, neutrality (real, not formal) and territorial concessions, the plan will be unacceptable to Russia. The Ukrainian and European leaders are well aware of this and are not seeking to end the war, but rather to escalate it.
They cannot reject the US peace initiative, so they are trying to amend the peace plan in such a way that Russia will reject it. If Trump considers Russia to be responsible for the failure of the talks, he will support Ukraine as much or more than the Biden administration. I think that is the only goal of the Ukrainian and European political elites.
Damilola, thank you for the article and would like to say that despite the difficult situations of these children in Russia, there is no safe place for them in Ukraine unfortunately as the war is ongoing. It could have been better if a European country like Germany, France, Belgium, or England will accept to take them in until the end of the hostilities and then return them to their families so that they could enjoy schooling and other developmental activities.