What Is Russification? How Russia Systematically Erases Ukrainian Children’s Identities

Russification is the deliberate, state-orchestrated process of erasing a person’s Ukrainian national identity and replacing it with a Russian one. When applied to children deported from Ukraine, it involves the systematic destruction of language, culture, documentation, family connections, and personal history.

It is not a side effect of war. It is the purpose of the deportations.

How Russification Works on Children

Language Erasure

Children are forbidden from speaking Ukrainian. All education, media, and daily communication is in Russian. Children who use Ukrainian are punished: reports document verbal abuse, isolation, and loss of privileges.

Document Destruction

Ukrainian birth certificates are confiscated and destroyed. New Russian documents are issued with Russian names, Russian citizenship, and sometimes falsified birthplaces. The paper trail connecting a child to Ukraine is deliberately eliminated.

Ideological Indoctrination

Children are enrolled in Russian nationalist curriculum. They learn that Russia is great and Ukraine is the enemy. They sing the Russian anthem. They visit patriotic sites. They are taught fabricated narratives about Ukrainian “atrocities” to justify their removal.

Military Training

Some children are placed in pseudo-military camps or cadet schools. Older boys receive training in vehicle and weapons operations. Russia’s Investigative Committee has set recruitment quotas and designated specific cadet schools for Ukrainian children: building a direct pipeline from kidnapping to military service.

Family Severance

Children are placed with Russian foster families or listed for adoption. They are told their biological families in Ukraine don’t want them, have forgotten about them, or gave them up. Contact with Ukrainian relatives is blocked.

Why It Meets the Definition of Genocide

Article II of the UN Genocide Convention lists five acts that constitute genocide when committed with intent to destroy a national group. Number five: “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” The European Parliament voted 516 to 3 to call Russia’s Russification of Ukrainian children a “genocidal strategy.”

Why Time Makes It Worse

A child who has been in Russia for one year can still speak Ukrainian and remember home. A child who has been there for four years is fluent in Russian, has formed attachments to foster families, has absorbed years of propaganda, and may resist returning to a country they’ve been taught to fear. Russia knows this. Every month of delay deepens the erasure.

What’s Being Done

Save Ukraine conducts extraction missions to physically retrieve children before Russification becomes irreversible. We Are All Ukrainians USA funds these missions. The ICC has issued arrest warrants. The UN has classified the deportations as crimes against humanity. But legal classifications don’t undo what’s been done to a child’s mind. Only rescue, rehabilitation, and time can do that.

Help fund a rescue at WeAreAllUkrainiansUSA.org