Recent reports have confirmed that Russia has transferred more than 19,000 Ukrainian children – and possibly significantly more – in a campaign of “Russification” aimed at their forced assimilation and permanent separation from their nation, write Payam Akhavan, Human Rights Chair at the University of Toronto’s Massey College, and Andriy Kostin, prosecutor-general of Ukraine. Many of the victims have been transferred to centres in the occupied territories and then deported to child care institutions in the Russian Federation, followed by adoption into families. Others are children who were abducted while on holiday, through the use of a network of 43 re-education camps.