Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Vincent Artman, Senior Researcher, Geography and Regional Development, University of Ostrava
The United Nations’ Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine recently delivered a significant finding: Russia’s systematic removal and Russification of Ukrainian children constitutes both a war crime and a crime against humanity.
Russia takes Ukrainian children from occupied territories, places them in Russian families, gives them Russian names, and, by presidential decree, grants them fast-tracked Russian citizenship.
More than 1,200 cases were verified by the commission, but the real number is likely much higher. Eighty per cent of the children remain in Russia, in many cases adopted into Russian families.
This disturbing finding, however, undermines one of the most enduring and pernicious Russian myths about the war itself.
The ‘NATO expansion’ myth
One of the most durable narratives about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, relentlessly promoted by figures like American international relations scholar John Mearsheimer, is that the war was simply a reluctant, defensive Russian reaction to “NATO expansionism.” The West, according to this narrative, provoked Russia, leaving Vladimir Putin with no choice but to respond.
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Ukraine, however, was not part of NATO in 2014 or 2022, and never even had a Membership Action Plan, an essential first step toward accession to NATO.
Western leaders explicitly accommodated Putin’s demands and kept Ukraine out of the alliance indefinitely. Despite various verbal assurances, NATO never actually offered Ukraine a pathway to membership, and Ukraine officially became a neutral, non-bloc state in 2010. That did not prevent Russia from invading in 2014.
“NATO expansion” was also not the reason cited in 2022 for launching Putin’s so-called “special military operation.” Instead, the Russian leader claimed the full-scale invasion was an effort to stop a genocide being perpetrated by the “neo-Nazi Kyiv regime” against Moscow’s puppet “people’s republics” in Luhansk and Donetsk. These claims are baseless.
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In the same speech, Putin also reiterated the claim that Russians and Ukrainians comprise a “single whole, despite the existence of state borders,” echoing arguments made in his 2021 essay, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.”
This belief forms part of what some scholars have argued is an ideology according to which Russia, as a distinct “civilization-state,” has a “civilizational mission” to “reunify” the Russian nation (including Ukrainians) and take back control of what are regarded as “historically Russian territories.”
According to Putin, that means the “true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.”
Little of this would seem to have much to do with legitimate security concerns.
The war Russia is truly fighting
The limits of the NATO expansion narrative become clearest when we look at how Russia is actually waging the war. If the Russian aim was truly to address security concerns, the country’s conduct would reflect that objective.
Instead, Russia razes entire cities and repopulates them with Russian citizens. It changes Ukrainian place names to Russian ones. It demolishes Ukrainian Orthodox churches and is “liquidating” the Roman Catholic Church in occupied territories.
It engages in passportization — a policy of forcing Russian citizenship on occupied populations by making basic survival contingent on accepting a Russian passport. It systematically targets schools, hospitals, energy infrastructure and cultural heritage, causing $176 billion in direct damage by the end of 2024, including destroying 13 per cent of Ukrainian housing.
As for the stolen children, the UN commission has found no functional mechanism for their return from Russia. Most will never go home.
Other children, still living in occupied territories, face the “eradication of their cultural identity,” including ideological indoctrination and militarization.
None of these actions make sense if understood through the lens of preventing NATO expansion, but they do once Russia’s eliminationist ideology, which actually fuels the conflict, is recognized and understood.
Why this matters for peace
In occupied territories, systematic Russification, linguistic discrimination, ideological education and coerced citizenship have been enforced through repression, torture, sexual violence and extrajudicial killings.
In front-line areas, the destruction of local governance, social infrastructure and demographic fabric are ongoing catastrophes. An estimated 3.55 million Ukrainians remain internally displaced; another 6.8 million have sought refuge abroad.
Achieving a just peace in Ukraine will therefore not be merely a matter of rebuilding damaged infrastructure. It will require a process of cultural and social restoration, one that will not succeed if policymakers remain attached to shallow and misleading explanations for why the destruction occurred in the first place.
If the war was truly about NATO, a land-for-peace deal with neutrality guarantees might theoretically suffice. But if the war is about erasing a people, their language, their culture and their future, then border adjustments will resolve little. A state whose leadership denies the existence of a separate Ukrainian identity will not be satisfied with mere territorial concessions.
Stolen generations
The NATO expansion myth cannot explain the war that Russia is actually fighting, nor can it explain the abduction and forced assimilation of Ukrainian children.
Ultimately, it’s a fable that shifts blame from the aggressor to the victims, undermining the prospects for a just and lasting peace.
Ukraine’s stolen generations are not “collateral damage” — they represent the war’s actual objectives. In the end, understanding those objectives will be essential to achieving peace and to rebuilding a country Russia appears intent on leaving without a future generation.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
– ref. Ukraine’s stolen children expose the lies at the heart of Russia’s four-year military assault – https://theconversation.com/ukraines-stolen-children-expose-the-lies-at-the-heart-of-russias-four-year-military-assault-278576