Darya Kasyanova: How Ukraine Rebuilds Childhood After Deportation

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/12/20

Darya Kasyanova is one of Ukraine’s leading child rights advocates and serves as chair of the Ukrainian Child Rights Network and as program director of SOS Children’s Villages Ukraine. For more than a decade, she has overseen deinstitutionalization reforms, family-based care, and emergency protection for children affected by Russia’s war. Since 2014, she has coordinated evacuations from frontline regions and, after the 2022 full-scale invasion, became a central voice documenting the deportation and forcible transfer of Ukrainian children. Her work now focuses on strategic litigation support, international advocacy, and the safe return, reintegration, and long-term recovery of abducted and displaced children.

In this in-depth conversation between Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Kasyanova, Ukraine’s leading child-rights advocate, the realities facing children abducted or displaced by Russia are outlined. Kasyanova explains how vulnerability, trauma, disrupted family ties, and ongoing militarization shape children’s experiences under occupation. She details the profound challenges in repatriating minors—especially those placed in Russian adoption systems—and stresses the need for international mechanisms that remain stalled. She describes emerging trauma patterns, barriers to psychological recovery, and the careful, child-led approach needed for reintegration. Throughout, Kasyanova emphasizes resilience, documentation, and global responsibility for accountability and child protection.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we are here with Darya Kasyanova, a leading Ukrainian child rights advocate, chair of the Ukrainian Child Rights Network, and program director of  SOS Children’s Villages Ukraine. For more than a decade, she has worked in deinstitutionalization, family-based care, and emergency protection for children affected by Russia’s war against Ukraine. Since 2014, she has coordinated evacuations from frontline regions, and after the 2022 full-scale invasion, has become a central public voice on the deportation and forcible transfer of Ukrainian children. Your network’s recent research shows that most abducted children come from already vulnerable families. What does this change? How should Ukraine and its partners design prevention and repatriation strategies?

Darya Kasyanova: You asked me about vulnerable families and children, and how we can prevent deportation or deinstitutionalization, because in some situations, this is a crime against children. I’m tired because I have many tasks, and today they returned small boys from the occupation. All night, we were in communication with our team, our volunteer team. 

In some situations, these are vulnerable families, and they return these children from occupied territories or from the territory of Russia. But what are vulnerable families in our situation? Very often, it is a family that lost their home, that lost relatives, and they try to live in a new situation, in new communities, or in a new oblast. It is not reintegration. It is integration, because it is an entirely new situation for them.

When children return to this family, in some situations, it brings many new challenges for the family and the child due to a long period of absence and living without parents. In some situations, these children have questions for their parents—why they stayed in occupied territory or in some institution, where their parents were during this time. Very often, the mother or father works in another territory, while the children live with their grandmother. On the first day of the invasion, parents could not return to this village, to a city like Kherson, or to territories in the Kharkiv region to take their children.

If we speak about children who were returned in the first months, parts of the Kharkiv region were under occupation from the first day of the whole invasion, but we returned these children in October 2022, together with their parents. And this is one modality of our work.

But when we speak about returning children after four years of being in the occupied territory or in the territory of Russia, there is a big gap between the parents and the child in their communication. It is essential to involve our specialists, such as mediators and psychologists from our organization, in working with the family and the child, because we need to build a new relationship between the parents and the child. It is not easy in some situations, especially when we speak about teenagers. Most of the children our team returned are teenagers. We also have cases with small children, and the youngest child is eight months old.

But with infants, it is easier because they do not remember what happened, and it is important to be with the mother and the family. With teenagers, it is a tricky situation. We prepare parents for conversations with their children and explain why the children were left in an unsafe environment. You may have heard that deportation, or being kept in Russian territory, is only one circumstance in a larger set of harms.

For example, we returned a 10-year-old boy who saw how his mother was killed in 2022. Or we returned a girl—14 years old—and she was raped by a Russian soldier. These are terrible situations. When we return children to relatives or to parents, sometimes the children think first about whether it is necessary to explain anything to their relatives, or how to speak about these terrible experiences with their parents. Often these children are wiser than their parents, because they try to understand whether it is a good time to discuss these questions, or whether they need to wait and prepare their parents or grandparents. And sometimes they decide they do not need to talk about it with their relatives now—or even later.

We work at SOS Children’s Villages and with our partners, because we implement this project together. These are NGOs with long experience in social work. We supported families, foster families, and children without parental care before the whole invasion. We try to replicate this experience in supporting children who were deported or forcibly displaced. We also work with children from institutions, and in some situations, it is a very similar process—whether we speak about returning a child from an institution or returning a child from deportation. The reintegration process is very similar.

We see that the model of behaviour of these children is similar, and the trauma markers are similar. These children are very much like children who lived a long period in institutions, in closed institutions without parental care, without the ability to communicate with or see their parents for long periods.

Jacobsen: It is impossible to get children back once they enter the Russian adoption or orphanage system. What are some of the hurdles there—the choke points for children entering that system, bureaucratic or legal? What are those bureaucratic and legal choke points that are hard to resolve, which result in children getting lost in the Russian system?

Kasyanova: If we speak about institutions, maybe it is not such a problem, because if a child is in the institutional system, the most important thing is that we have information about these children. In some situations, when we speak about children aged 6, 7, 10, or up to 18, they can communicate with other children and often use social media. So it is possible to find them. We can also find these children through our social system.

But if we speak about small children and about adoption, it is tough to find them and to identify them. According to Russian legislation—and this legislation is similar to Ukrainian legislation—when a child is adopted, the adoptive parents have the right to change the child’s name and date of birth. That makes finding these children very, very difficult.

We have cases when children were placed in Russian foster families. That is different, because foster care is not adoption. In foster families, children keep their names and their dates of birth. When these children have their own families—parents—and the parents try to find them, these children are teenagers. We returned these children together with their parents.

But the Russian foster families were against returning these children. It was a long, complicated process. The parents informed Maria Lvova-Belova, and only after involving this official were the children returned home.

But when we speak about adoption, it is a big challenge for us to identify these children. In 2022, the information about our children who appeared on Russian online adoption platforms often stated that these children were from the Kherson region, Donetsk region, or Luhansk region. We tried to identify these children and collect information from our social services. But now Russia has completely changed this information.

If a child is from the Luhansk region but is now in Taganrog, the place of birth will appear as Taganrog, not the Luhansk region. This is a big problem. We cannot return children who were adopted. Maybe only when they grow up and want to know something about their origins. But now it is not easy. Even if we involve third countries or international organizations in this process, it would still be tough.

Jacobsen: What does Russification of children look like in practice? How have their tactics evolved during the war? 

Kasyanova: In some situations, it is not exactly right. It could be more about teaching children to hate Ukraine. We have cases of children who lived in Mariupol and spoke Russian but loved Ukraine. They wanted to live in Ukraine. When they were deported to Russia, they first heard from adults that Ukraine does not exist, that Ukraine is not a country, that Ukraine does not exist at all, and that our language is foul. These children were told they did not need their parents; they did not need their country.

After that, there is powerful propaganda about Russian traditions, Russian values, the idea of Russia’s greatness, and much militarization. Even small children in school sing Russian patriotic songs and take part in competitions with a military focus. There were many meetings with veterans of the Russian war, and the children who spoke with our team described them extensively. It becomes a new reality for them, a new everyday life.

Yesterday, my colleagues wrote in our chat that they returned children who spoke about school in the occupied territory of Kherson. In school, they met Russian soldiers. The soldiers asked the children, “Do you like to kill people? Do you think about killing people?” It is terrible. These questions were asked in front of teachers and children, and the discussion was treated as a normal one.

That is why I cannot say it is only about Russification. It is about militarization and indoctrination. I know many cases when children spoke Russian, but after returning to Ukraine from the occupation, they began studying Ukrainian and now speak only Ukrainian. It is like a trauma connected with the Russian language. It is not a simple problem; it is a real trauma for these children.

Jacobsen: How do you communicate this in collaboration between NGOs, Ukrainian state bodies, and international actors? What patterns meet the legal threshold for war crimes against children?

Kasyanova: Our team returned the first children in June 2022. After that, I was in communication with the International Criminal Court and its investigators. We had meetings with representatives of the Red Cross, the UN system in Geneva, and other international and humanitarian organizations that have a mandate to return children from deportation.

We discussed how to increase the number of children returned and develop a more effective repatriation mechanism. They said they were developing this mechanism, but we have already been waiting 4 years for it. We also share our reports, research, and cases of children who were returned, because all these cases must be documented and included in international reports. Many see that children who returned through our team have become advocates for other children at the international level. This is important because there are often questions suggesting that perhaps it is acceptable for Ukrainian children to remain in Russian families, and that they are. I am not sure that is true. It is a very different and strange approach, especially when all these countries—Russia, Ukraine, and others—have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is not easy to explain.

We have excellent collaboration with other international organizations, for example, Save the Children, Tdh Lausanne (Terre des hommes), and Ukrainian organizations.

We collaborate with Save Ukraine and our government because, in some situations, it is tough to return children without the support of state authorities. We need to prepare documents, and sometimes that involves verifying kinship when we’retalking about relatives and children. Of course, we inform and share all information with UN agencies. It is important.

Jacobsen: What happens to the children who come back—their sense of the world, their perception? What happens with their worldview?

Kasyanova: It depends on the situation. We have returned about 300 children, but I cannot say their picture of the world is destroyed. No. They are influential young people. In some situations, I do not understand where they find the strength to continue living.

First, we provide them with social support. Only after that can our specialists—psychologists and others—begin their work. In many cases, children do not work with psychologists at first. I understand this because it is about trust and building trust.

For example, when we returned a 16-year-old boy in 2022—he had been raped in a Russian institution—he was only ready to talk about it with a psychologist three years later. It was his decision, without any pressure from specialists. But throughout that time, our team supported him with education, medical services, repairs to his apartment, and exam preparation.

Today, there is much more mental health support, and it is becoming a new trend in Ukraine.

Kasyanova: For Ukraine, these are complicated cases, and we need to be very careful when offering help to children. These children must have the possibility to choose their specialists. In some situations, for example, we have only two psychologists. But sometimes a psychologist may not be suitable for a child.

Very often, I have cases like a girl who was returned from Lipetsk, Russia. She had been deported, and her mother is a Ukrainian service member. She said she did not like our psychologist because the psychologist reminded her of a teacher from a Russian school. We need to take all these peculiarities into account. We involve other specialists, but only when the child is ready. That is very important. When they do not want to share or talk about their life in occupation or deportation, it is not effective. We need to maintain a connection with these children, because they open up over time.

Now we are more prepared. In 2022—and I mean, I have been in the war since 2014 because I was responsible for evacuations in the Luhansk region—in 2014, trauma and war were something new. Now we have many specialists with many methodologies. But we want to use more evidence-based and practical approaches. Still, this is not the basic need. Basic needs are safety, food, and clothing. Only after that can we offer psychological support. It is step by step.

In some situations, it can take a very long time for a child to be ready.

Jacobsen: Thank you very much for your time, and I hope you have a good rest of your day.

Kasyanova: Thank you, Scott. Thank you very much.

Jacobsen: Have a nice day. Bye.

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