Eleven children, including an infant, returned from Russian-occupied Kherson Oblast to Ukraine-controlled territory
Eleven children aged from 1 year and 4 months to 17 were returned from the Russian-occupied part of Kherson Oblast to Ukrainian-controlled territory, the head of the Kherson Oblast Military Administration, Oleksandr Prokudin, said. The operation was carried out with the charity Save Ukraine under the presidential Bring Kids Back UA initiative. Among those brought back, several said they had been subjected to militarization and intimidation in occupation schools.
Key points
- 11 children returned from Russian-occupied Kherson Oblast to Ukraine-controlled territory: 7 boys and 4 girls, aged 1 year 4 months to 17.
- The head of the Kherson Oblast Military Administration, Oleksandr Prokudin, announced the return.
- The operation was carried out with the Save Ukraine charity under the presidential Bring Kids Back UA initiative.
- A 16-year-old said he survived an armed attack by Russian soldiers in his own home and was forced to learn weapons handling and combat-drone operation in the occupation school.
- A 17-year-old was forced under threats to attend the Russian school, later put on military registration; his family endured regular armed searches.
- The family of an 8-year-old girl was threatened with placing her in an orphanage if she did not study under the Russian program; children at the occupation school were also forced to draw postcards for Russian soldiers.
- 219 children have been returned from occupied Kherson Oblast since the beginning of 2026; the Bring Kids Back platform estimates more than 20,000 Ukrainian children have been deported since the full-scale invasion began.
Why it matters
The return underscores both the scale of Ukraine's repatriation effort — 219 children brought back from Kherson Oblast alone since the start of 2026 — and the conditions the children describe having endured in occupation, including forced weapons and drone training, military registration, threats against families, and propaganda activities in schools. These are the kinds of allegations at the center of the International Criminal Court's March 2023 arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin and Russian children's rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova over the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children.
What happened
Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of the Kherson Oblast Military Administration, announced that 11 children had been returned from the temporarily occupied part of Kherson Oblast to Ukrainian-controlled territory. The group consisted of 7 boys and 4 girls, with ages ranging from 1 year and 4 months to 17 years. The return was carried out with the Save Ukraine charity as part of the presidential Bring Kids Back UA initiative. All 11 children are reported to be safe and receiving necessary assistance.
Accounts recorded by the returning children describe abuse and intimidation under occupation. A 16-year-old boy said he survived an armed attack by Russian soldiers in his own home and was forced in an occupation school to learn weapons handling and how to operate combat drones. A 17-year-old said he was threatened into attending the Russian school and was subsequently placed on the military register; his family said it endured regular armed searches. The family of an 8-year-old girl said occupiers threatened to place her in an orphanage unless she studied under the Russian program. Children at the occupation school were also drawn into propaganda activities, including being forced to draw greeting cards for Russian military personnel.
Since the beginning of 2026, 219 children have been returned from the occupied part of Kherson Oblast. The Bring Kids Back platform estimates that more than 20,000 Ukrainian children have been deported by Russia since the start of the full-scale invasion, and that as of September 2026 more than 2,500 had been returned.
How Ukrainian sources describe it
All reporting on the return comes from Ukrainian outlets, and they uniformly frame the event as an act of bringing children home from Russian occupation. The reporting gives prominent place to children's testimonies about abuse, militarization and intimidation in the occupation school, and several outlets highlight the involvement of the Save Ukraine charity and the presidential Bring Kids Back UA initiative to underline the institutional framework behind the effort. The youngest child among those returned is repeatedly singled out to underscore the human scale of the return.
Where reporting differs
Ukrainian sources offer diverging figures for the overall scale of deportations and returns. The Bring Kids Back platform estimates that more than 20,000 Ukrainian children have been deported since the full-scale invasion; a separate Ukrainian article cites official data putting the figure at more than 200,000 children deported to Russia since February 24, 2022. Figures for the number returned also vary: more than 2,500 as of September 2026, more than 2,600 through the Bring Kids Back UA initiative, and 2,665 according to verified Ukrainian data as of October 8. Russia's claim that about 700,000 Ukrainian children are 'registered in Russia', with some placed for adoption in Russian families, is reported by one Ukrainian outlet and is not corroborated by the Ukrainian sources, which frame it as a competing figure rather than a verified count.
Background
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant in March 2023 for Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova over the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children. In May 2026, the United Kingdom imposed sanctions on 85 Russians linked to the forced deportation, ideological indoctrination and militarization of Ukrainian children, and also sanctioned the 'Songdowon' camp in North Korea reportedly used in such transfers. In September 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump signed a law expanding U.S. sanctions tied to the forced deportation of Ukrainian children. The Bring Kids Back platform estimates that more than 20,000 Ukrainian children have been deported since the start of the full-scale invasion and that, as of September 2026, more than 2,500 had been returned.