Public radio’s longest-running daily global news program.AboutContactDonateMeet the TeamPrivacyTerms of use©2026 The World from PRXPRX is a 501(c)(3) organization recognized by the IRS: #263347402.Calls during UNGA to investigate thousands of Ukrainian children being forcibly transferred to RussiaCanada organized a summit at this year’s UN General Assembly to address the thousands of Ukrainian children who have been forcibly transferred to Russia over the past several years. The World’s Shirin Jaafari attended the session at the UN headquarters in New York and discussed the details with Host Marco Werman. UkraineOctober 1, 2025Updated: October 1, 20258:51Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska attends the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York, Sept. 24, 2025.Two major conflicts were top of mind at the United Nations General Assembly this year: the wars in Gaza and in Ukraine.US President Donald Trump addressed delegates at the UN headquarters in New York and said he had thought Ukraine would be the easiest war to end but that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has proven to be recalcitrant. Trump also mocked Putin’s management of the war.“It was supposed to be just a quick little skirmish. It’s not making Russia look good. It’s making them look bad,” Trump said. “No matter what happens, from here on out, this was something that should have taken a matter of days, certainly less than a week, and they’ve been fighting for three and a half years.”A short time later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took part in a summit at the UN organized by Canada. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney laid out the need for the conference.“Putin has stolen Ukrainian children,” Carney said. “Thousands of children have been abducted by Russia. Russia has repeatedly targeted the most vulnerable groups of children, including orphans, children with disabilities, children from poor families.”Children from Donetsk region, the site of heavy battles with the Russian troops, wait to evacuate at a railway station in Lozova, Kharkiv region, Ukraine, Sept. 26, 2025.Andrii Marienko/APThe World’s Shirin Jaafari was at that conference in New York, and she joined Host Marco Werman to discuss more.Shirin Jaafari: Well, the reason Canada organized this event, Marco, was because it wants to raise attention to the missing children of Ukraine, specifically children who have been taken by Russia.The Ukrainian government estimates that about 20,000 of them have been forcibly transferred since 2022, but experts say that that’s an undercount, and the figure is more like 35,000. President Zelenskyy was his usual self, wearing his military-themed outfit, that’s what he’s been wearing since the beginning of the war, and he had a clear message for the audience: “The crime must be stopped. The felons must be held accountable. Ukrainian children must be brought home.”In addition to Zelenskyy and Carney, both of the First Ladies of Ukraine and Canada spoke, as well. And they drew on the themes of motherhood and the fact that the safety and well-being of children must be a priority for everybody across the world. They both gave examples of children whose lives were turned upside down because of having been abducted by Russia. Olena Zelenska, Ukraine’s First Lady, said: “If one child were abducted, we would be outraged and demand justice. But what if an entire state, using its institutions in the army, abducts not only one but thousands of children?”And Marco, you could tell that this is a very emotional topic for both of these women.So, the goal is to draw attention and to get the help of powerful leaders, like President Trump, to get these children back home. Now, I have to emphasize that abducting children and re-educating them, which is what Russia is doing, is against international law.And in fact, in March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Putin and Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, for alleged war crimes. So, that was the first step toward accountability. The session at the United Nations came just a few days after a new report by war crimes investigators revealed that the problem of abduction of these children is much worse than what we previously knew about.An exterior view of the International Criminal Court at The Hague in the Netherlands, Dec. 6, 2022.Peter Dejong/AP/File photoSo, these researchers initially thought that there are 115 sites in Russia where Ukrainian children are held, but then they found that, in fact, the number is 210. Nathaniel Raymond heads the humanitarian research lab at the Yale School of Public Health, and he was involved in the research.“This case is the single largest kidnapping of children since World War II in war,” Raymond said.Raymond told The World that there are different types of “camps” for these children in Russia. There are ones where the focus is on re-education, meaning that children are not allowed to speak Ukrainian and they’re educated in Russian and they have to speak Russian. Otherwise, he said that in some cases, they are given solitary confinement as punishment if they do that. He said that the youngest child that he knows about that is in these programs was just four months old, Marco, when he was captured in Ukraine, and then some of these children end up in camps that train them for military purposes.“That can include literal training and combat tactics. Some were sent to a paratrooper jump school. Others, we can even see from space, are at locations with shooting ranges, while others are sent to what’s called cadet corps programs.”These are really young children, and you can understand why this is so concerning for researchers and war crimes investigators.Well, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that he wants to see more accountability, that the issue of these children cannot be forgotten and set aside. But researchers like Raymond face challenges. And one of them, Marco, is that the United States has imposed sanctions on individuals at the International Criminal Court and that has complicated the work of these war crimes researchers.“There’s been extreme confusion about whether the sanctions against the ICC puts American organizations at risk for sharing information on Ukraine, Sudan and other cases not related to Israel-Palestine,” Raymond added.And Raymond said that his team decided to list all of these locations in their report publicly so that they could provide this information quickly and effectively to prosecutors at the ICC without risking violating US sanctions.This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.