A humanitarian and moral crisis of child abduction is in full bloom in wartime Ukraine, where Russia is working to erase Ukrainian identity. Putin’s method is forced relocation, indoctrination, and militarization of Ukrainian children against their homeland.
Mykola Kuleba, a Ukrainian statesman is working to rescue, rehabilitate, and reintegrate these children through Save Ukraine. He has spent over 25 years defending the rights of children, from leading child protection services in Kyiv to serving as the Commissioner for Children’s Rights under two Ukrainian presidents.
As the head of Save Ukraine, he is spearheading rescue efforts to recover abducted Ukrainian children from Russian-occupied territories and Russia itself. “I devoted my life to God,” Kuleba says. “God told me to serve children.”
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, American missionaries introduced him to the gospel, shaping his path toward lifelong service. That path led him to public service following Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, and eventually to launching Save Ukraine after Russia’s first invasion in 2014. Since the full-scale invasion in 2022, his organization has become the largest in Ukraine dedicated to recovering children stolen during the war.
“Russia takes them from their families and brings them to military academies, Russian orphanages, and Russian families to instill hatred towards Ukraine and turn them into Russian soldiers,” he says. His team has returned 637 children, including 141 orphans. “We rescued even from Russian orphanages or Russian foster families—kids who didn’t want to stay there.”
“I have evidence,” he says. “This is cultural genocide.” One girl his team rescued had been raped by a Russian soldier and became pregnant. “She decided she was going to have that child and love that child no matter what the circumstances were,” he says. “She turned something meant for evil into hope for Ukraine’s future.”
Save Ukraine provides a robust system of rehabilitation and reintegration. “Children can attend our educational programs,” he says.
The organization works with local churches and communities to rebuild children’s lives—especially those traumatized by loss, abuse, or persecution for their faith. “We have children whose parents were killed before their eyes,” he says. “We have parents and children who’ve been persecuted in occupied territories as Christians.”
Kuleba estimates that 1.6 million Ukrainian lives—mostly children—have been lost to abduction or isolation in occupied territories since 2014. Russian authorities registered 744,000 Ukrainian children in Russia in 2023 alone. “They are brainwashed,” Kuleba says. “They’re told Ukraine doesn’t exist. I grew up in the Soviet Union. I know what I’m talking about.”
His memories of Soviet indoctrination add urgency to his mission. “They told me every day that I had to fight Americans,” he says. “Now Russia is trying to return to that totalitarian regime–the same iron curtain.”
Save Ukraine’s work is dangerous and complex. “We’ve evacuated more than 100,000 children and parents from combat zones,” Kuleba says. “We have more than 60 vehicles—armored cars, armored buses, ambulances.” He describes a specialized bus built for evacuations under fire. “It holds 25 kids. We use these buses for massive evacuations, but now we often use smaller cars because drones make everything more dangerous.”
Even locating abducted children is difficult. “You have to cross a lot of checkpoints, be interrogated, possibly sent to a lie detector test. If they find something Ukrainian, you could be arrested, separated from your child,” he says. “That’s why rescue must be safe.”
Kuleba’s team follows a three-part approach: rescue, restore, and reintegrate. “We search, identify, locate, and communicate with the kids. Most people don’t understand how hard it is to leave occupied territories or Russia.”
Now in the United States, Kuleba hopes to raise awareness and support. “Americans are, for me, the example of God’s love,” he says. “People who fight for freedom, fight for justice.”
He’s meeting with U.S. officials and sharing stories like that of a young man rescued from a military academy and a mother who crossed enemy lines to retrieve her child. “Children aging out of orphanages, teens sent to military academies—we want to see a path to safety and to family,” adds Heather Dyer, CEO of Save Ukraine U.S.
Kuleba fears that abducted children could become bargaining chips in peace negotiations. “It’s unconditional–we cannot allow this,” he says. “It’s against humanity.” He estimates that Ukraine lost 50% of the child population in the last 11 years because of war.
“Nobody wants peace more than Ukrainian children,” he says. “But peace cannot come at the cost of forgetting the children.” He cites Psalm 82: “Rescue the weak and the needy. Deliver them from the hand of the wicked. That’s for everybody.”
