Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of indoctrinating abducted Ukrainian children to fight for Moscow, a charge that deepens Kyiv's list of grievances against the Kremlin. In a Sunday interview on CBS' Face the Nation, Zelensky asserted that his government possesses concrete evidence of this practice.
“Yes, we have evidence of it,” Zelensky told host Margaret Brennan. “Yes, and they taught these children to hate their native country, to hate native people. And Ukrainians, can you imagine, such young Ukrainians, young boys, come to the battlefield and kill Ukrainians.”
According to a tracker maintained by the Ukrainian government, 1.6 million children remain under Russian control—through deportation, forced transfer, or being trapped in temporarily occupied territories. Zelensky said Kyiv has identified 20,000 adolescents who have faced deportation or forced transfer, with only 2,200 returned so far. The government is pushing for the release of more.
The Ukrainian leader disclosed that Moscow proposed swapping children for Ukrainian prisoners of war. Zelensky firmly rejected the idea. “We can’t exchange civilians. You can give back civilians,” he said. “And how you can exchange—yes, it’s important to get back our warriors, war prisoners—but we can’t exchange them on the children.” He added that Russia's proposal itself is an admission of guilt: “But the fact that Russia proposed to exchange children, this is the answer, that they stole children.”
Zelensky called on the U.S. Congress to impose new sanctions on Russia over the abductions. “I hope that Congress will find the possibility again to put sanctions on Russians, because of the children,” he said. The Trump administration has extended a pause on Russian sanctions at the request of Asian countries dependent on oil amid the Iran war, but European Union sanctions and asset freezes remain due to evidence of Russian efforts to abduct children for adoption, military camps, or reindoctrination.
Zelensky emphasized the need for Ukraine to regain leverage in negotiations with Russia by strengthening its battlefield position. He noted that Russia began losing initiative on the battlefield in December 2025, creating a window for talks. “From this point of view, I shared this information with our American partners,” he said. “I said to them in January, I think that we have a window for the negotiations, because each month they will lose more and more people, and they will lose initiative on the battlefield.”
He added that Moscow responds only to strength: “Russians don’t understand words, they don’t understand emotions, because they think that this is a weak position.”
The abduction and militarization of children adds a grim dimension to the conflict, which has already seen devastating aerial barrages and shifts in drone warfare. As Kyiv pushes for the return of its children, the international community faces mounting pressure to act.
