The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has notified the Russian government of application No. 6719/23, submitted by the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union (UHHRU) on behalf of ten Ukrainian children who were taken from Crimea after the occupation of the peninsula in 2014. The court has requested official comments from the Russian side, which must be submitted by July 31, 2025.
According to the human rights advocates, the case concerns children aged one to five years old who were under state care in children's institutions at the time of the occupation. After Russia took control of Crimea, the Russian authorities refused to return the children to Ukraine, did not provide information about their whereabouts, and later their profiles appeared on a Russian adoption website, as explained by the Ukrainian Presidential Representative in Crimea.
It is suggested that some of the children may have been adopted, as their profiles have disappeared from the platform. In 2014, Russian authorities declared over 4,000 orphaned Ukrainian children from Crimea as Russian citizens.
The statement highlights that the application to the ECHR is based, in particular, on articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantee the right to respect for private life, liberty, and personal security. According to the applicants, the arbitrary change of citizenship and subsequent adoption deprived the children of their social identity as citizens of Ukraine. The detention of the children in institutions after the occupation of Crimea is also considered a violation of their rights.
