Unraveling claims Russia created online ‘marketplace’ for kidnapped Ukrainian children

In early August 2025, social media posts alleged that Russia had launched a public online “catalog” or “marketplace” offering kidnapped Ukrainian children for adoption.
As of this writing, a database resembling that description is hosted on the official website of the Russian-controlled Luhansk People’s Republic. It includes profiles of children with photographs, personal details and search filters. It was not newly created, however, having previously operated under another LPR ministry.
According to Yale Medical School’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which reported the results of its 20-month investigation into Russia’s program of coerced adoption and fostering of Ukrainian children in December 2024, similar online listings have operated in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories for years.
Ukrainian NGO Save Ukraine said the children featured in the online database had been abducted from Ukrainian territory and that it was working to identify them. Snopes has not independently verified the status of the children.
Rights groups and the International Criminal Court have documented Russia’s unlawful transfer of thousands of Ukrainian children, often involving changes to their names and citizenship to obscure their Ukrainian origins. The ICC issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights over alleged war crimes related to the deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children.

In August 2025, amid Russia’s war against Ukraine, social media posts accused Russia of creating an online catalog of kidnapped Ukrainian children, complete with photos, ages and personality notes, and offering them for adoption.

One widely shared Threads post (archived), for example, claimed the site listed nearly 300 “stolen kids” — searchable by hair and eye color — “as if they were products for sale,” calling it “21st-century child trafficking, in broad daylight.” Similar claims spread across Facebook, Threads and X.

In short, the posts pointed to a real database hosted on the website of the so-called Ministry of Education and Science of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic — a Russian-controlled entity in part of eastern Ukraine that Russia illegally annexed in 2022. 

In early August 2025, the Ukrainian nongovernmental organization Save Ukraine reported the site contained details of children taken from Ukrainian territory and made available for adoption in Russia. Although the social media posts framed the database as a recent creation, it wasn’t entirely new. The same database was previously hosted on the website of the LPR’s Ministry of Labor and Social Policy before being moved to the Ministry of Education and Science.

While Snopes could not independently confirm whether the children listed were indeed abducted from Ukraine, the database fits into a well-documented pattern. Russian authorities have unlawfully transferred thousands of Ukrainian children from occupied areas to Russia, often changing their identities and severing ties to their homeland. In 2023, the “war crime of unlawful deportation” of children led the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s children’s commissioner.

Source of the claim

Many of the online posts making the claim included a screenshot of a Euronews article titled “Stolen children ‘marketplace’: Russia creates ‘catalog’ of Ukrainian kids for adoption.” That coverage, along with similar reports, was based on social media posts by Mykola Kuleba — the founder of Save Ukraine and former presidential commissioner for children’s rights in Ukraine.

In an X post, Kuleba wrote: “Russia isn’t even trying to hide it anymore. It’s openly trafficking Ukrainian children. On official platforms, Ukrainian orphans are displayed like products in an online marketplace. … This isn’t care. It’s state-sponsored child trafficking.” He added that, since 2014, children from occupied regions had been “systematically abdu[c]ted, renamed, and placed with Russian families,” and updated laws now allow Russian authorities to alter their surnames and birthdays.

Save Ukraine and Kuleba shared similar posts on Telegram, Instagram and Facebook. 

In an Instagram post, Kuleba claimed most of the children in the “catalog” were born before Luhansk’s occupation and held Ukrainian citizenship, alleging that some had lost parents to occupation forces while others were issued Russian documents to “legalize the kidnapping.”

What we know about the ‘Adoption Data Bank’

As of August 2025, the database was available on the website (archived) of the Ministry of Education and Science of the LPR under a subpage titled “Adoption Data Bank.” 

The so-called LPR is a self-proclaimed entity in eastern Ukraine, declared in 2014 amid Russia-backed separatist activity in the Donbas region. Internationally, the territory is recognized as part of Ukraine, but since 2014 it has been under the control of Russian-supported authorities. In 2022, Russia illegally annexed the area, a move widely condemned as illegal under international law. As of this writing, the territory remains under Russian occupation.

The database allowed visitors to search for children by name or filter results by gender, age range, eye color, hair color and whether the child had siblings. 

(Ministry of Education and Science for the Luhansk People’s Republic, Google Translate)

Each profile included photographs, personal details and descriptions of academic performance, interests and personality traits. The profiles featured children between the ages of 1 and 17.

(Ministry of Education and Science for the Luhansk People’s Republic, Google Translate)

In a LinkedIn message, Save Ukraine told us its Rescue Investigations Team had identified the website and was still collecting documentation with the help of specialized experts. 

Similarly, according to The Kyiv Independent, Save Ukraine’s head of communications, Nataliia Savchenko, said that after the database gained attention, Russian authorities began removing photographs from the site. She added that Save Ukraine was working with Ukrainian officials to locate the children and return them to government-controlled territory and that the database could serve as evidence in a human trafficking investigation.

Kuleba likewise wrote on X: “We have archived the website and secured the full database. We are working tirelessly to identify every child listed, and we won’t stop until they are brought home.”

On Aug. 11, Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets wrote on Telegram that he had notified law-enforcement agencies, calling the database “a violation of the rights of the child” and potentially a sign of human trafficking.

The database isn’t a new thing

The adoption database was not newly created, as some social media posts claimed, but had existed for years — alongside similar regional adoption websites. According to Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab report, Russian occupation officials have maintained such sites since at least 2016, mirroring the structure and search features of Russia’s Ministry of Education databases.

The LPR’s database was publicly accessible at least as early as 2016, at the time hosted on the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy’s website. In mid-2024, the database was simply transferred to the LPR’s Ministry of Education and Science and in August 2025 the new website was launched. 

All in all, Snopes was unable to independently verify the identities of the children listed in the database. It also remains unclear who is eligible to adopt them — whether it is citizens from across Russia or only those residing in the occupied region.

Russia’s coerced adoptions of Ukrainian children 

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ukrainian and international authorities have accused Moscow of unlawfully transferring thousands of children from occupied territories to Russia. Ukrainian officials estimate that Russia has unlawfully deported and forcibly transferred more than 19,000 children from Ukraine.

In December 2024, the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab published a report documenting 314 children taken from Ukraine and placed in Russia’s state-run program of coerced adoption and fostering since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022. Of these, 148 children were scattered across at least five regions of Russia and listed in official Russian child placement databases. The remaining 166 children were directly placed with Russian citizens. According to the HRL, all of the children identified in the study originated from Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, Ukrainian territories under Russian occupation. 

Nathaniel Raymond, the HRL’s executive director, testified about the findings before the U.N. Security Council.

“Save Ukraine’s publication of LPR’s adoption website may provide additional evidence that supports the legal argument put forth in HRL’s December 2024 report: Russia is forcibly transferring Ukraine’s children to Russia and is carrying out the unlawful adoption and fostering of Ukraine’s children,” the organization commented in August 2025.

In an interview with OSV News (a Catholic news and information service), Raymond said the LPR database had drawn significant attention but its size was small compared to the number of Ukrainian children potentially listed across multiple interconnected Russian adoption platforms.

International legal action and condemnations

Multiple reports by reputable news organizations such as the BBC, The Conversation, Time magazine, The New York Times and The Guardian have documented Russia’s efforts to abduct Ukrainian children and integrate them into Russian culture.

In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, Russia’s presidential commissioner for children’s rights, accusing them of the war crimes of unlawful deportation and transfer of children. The European Parliament and other institutions also condemned Russia’s actions. 

In early July 2025, the European Court of Human Rights found “overwhelming evidence of a systematic practice from shortly before the 2022 invasion of transferring Ukrainian children in occupied areas to Russia, without parental or legal consent, and facilitating their adoption there.” 

Lastly, in early August 2025, the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children, comprising 38 countries along with the Council of Europe and the EU, urged Russia to immediately and unconditionally return Ukrainian children taken from occupied territories.

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