Human rights are typically
thought of as applying to individuals, even to groups, but do national-ethnic
human rights exist? Do nations having a distinct ethnic culture have the right
to their respective citizenries from being indoctrinated by other governments set
on erasing even traces of the culture from the minds of citizens? If so, then by 2026, Ukraine had a legitimate
claim against Russia for having violated the rights of the Ukrainian state as
protector of the Ukrainian ethnicity in the populous. In particular, as part of
its multi-year invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government violated the human
rights of Ukraine itself and Ukrainian children not only by kidnapping the kids
to Russia, but also in indoctrinating them with the intent of ridding them of
their distinctly Ukrainian cultural identity.
On May 11, 2026, the “European
Union imposed sanctions on 16 Russian officials accused of helping Moscow in
the abduction of tens of thousands of children from Ukraine.”[1]
Ukraine’s government had verified the number at 20,500, Yale University’s
Humanitarian Research Lab estimated the number at 35,000, and Russia suggested
that the number could be as high as 700,000.[2]
Could it be that Moscow was bragging? That would reflect not well at all
on the very notion of human rights internationally, as distinct from guidelines
that governments need not be ashamed of violating.
Regardless of the number, the abduction and indoctrination of children is arguably among the worst of war crimes. “Of all the horrors inflicted by Russia’s war, the deportation and forced transfer of Ukrainian children is one of the worst crimes,” the E.U.’s foreign minister Kaja Kallas said at the time.[3] Russia’s actions include “indoctrination and militarized education, as well as their unlawful adoption and removal to Russia and within temporarily occupied territories.”[4] A statement by the European Council—rid of the recently defeated pro-Russia Viktor Orbán of Hungary—includes: “These actions constitute grave breaches of international law and a violation of the fundamental rights of the child and aim to erase Ukrainian identity and undermine the preservation of its future generations.”[5] Such preservation over generations arguably involves the interest of the Ukrainian state because the duration exceeds that of the children themselves. In other words, something more than the rights of the abducted and indoctrinated was being violated in the clash between the Russian and Ukrainian governments.
Andrii Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister, said, “This is a deliberate Russian policy aimed at destroying Ukrainian identity. Children are forced to forget who they are, where they come from, and even their language.”[6] Besides the horrific psychological, existential impact on the children in being effectively erased and reprogrammed as Russians, which makes being forced to live with foster parents in a strange land seem ordinary by comparison, the Russian intent is to use the children as part of a larger goal: that of erasing the Ukrainian ethnicity from the face of the Earth. This too reflects back on a legitimate right of the Ukrainian state to preserve that ethnicity. No national legislature would vote to voluntary extinguish its national culture unless forced to do so by another country’s government. In fact, the right is so fundamental that it rarely needs to be made transparent. This is why it may seem strange to refer to a human right of a nation.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
