Negotiations conducted without regard for dignity and life risk forgetting every Ukrainian child stolen from its parents’ arms, cataloged, filtered and absorbed into the aggressor’s history.
The boy’s blue eyes look directly at you from the screen. Under the photo is written: “Calm, obedient, six years old, blue eyes, blond hair.” As if this is a dog from an asylum and not a living child kidnapped from the occupied part of Ukraine. As if identity is something that can be edited in a filter – by gender, eye color, age, and temperament – and offered to anyone who wants it with a click.
Russia has digitized what slave traders have done for centuries: stripped hundreds of children of their names, histories, and families, and turned them into a catalog. According to official figures, more than 19,500 Ukrainian children have been confirmed as abducted and deported to Russia. The true figures may be far higher, as the occupied territories are closed to international observers and the children’s tracks are systematically covered up, as are schools, hospitals, and maternity wards destroyed.