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A Russian website is offering profiles of Ukrainian children in a format that resembles an online shop, the Ukrainian aid organisation Save Ukraine has reported. The NGO says 294 children are currently listed, with photos and short descriptions that can be searched by age, gender, personality or health — a presentation that Save Ukraine calls a digital “catalogue” of children.
The listings include a photo for each child plus a brief character sketch and basic physical details such as age, hair and eye colour. According to a report by Alexander Heinen of the German newspaper Bild, some entries read like personality summaries: one boy is described as “conflict-free, sociable, hardworking” and interested in sports and leadership, while another entry highlights a girl’s cultural talents, noting acting, singing, dancing and expressive recitation. The site’s layout, the report says, allows viewers to sort profiles by different traits, which critics say makes the pages look like an online slave market.
Save Ukraine — a Ukrainian aid organisation that tracks wartime abductions and relocations — says most of the children listed come from territories now under Russian control, including Kherson, Mariupol and Luhansk. Mykola Kuleba, the organisation’s leader, posted on Instagram that his team has documented what he described as a pattern that can only be called child trafficking: “Together with my team at Save Ukraine we have found evidence that Russia is now using methods that can only be described as child trafficking.”
On the social platform X, Kuleba added that many of the children are not classic “war orphans.” He said some children still have parents, some families were killed by occupying forces, and in other cases Russian documents were issued in a bid to “legalise” the transfers. The NGO’s reporting does not allege a single, uniform motive for every listing, but it does say the pattern points to systematic efforts to move children out of Ukrainian custody.
Independent reporting last year identified Ukrainian children on Russian adoption portals. The Financial Times, for example, reported that it had found several Ukrainian children listed on a Russian adoption website, and said their origins had been obscured. Save Ukraine’s current findings, the NGO says, follow on from those earlier cases and suggest the practice has continued.
The NGO’s report and related media accounts underline continuing concerns about the fate of children taken from conflict zones and how online platforms are being used to display them. Authorities and independent investigators have not yet published a comprehensive public accounting of every case referenced by Save Ukraine.
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