>> Breaking news out of the Hague in the Netherlands, the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Russia’s Vladimir Putin for his alleged involvement in the unlawful deportation of children from Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine... >> NARRATOR: Thousands of Ukrainian children, taken and held by Russia.

>> (speaking Ukrainian): >> They put them in these military camps and trying to re-educate them politically, ideologically.

>> NARRATOR: Families searching for their loved ones, and the investigators following the trail of alleged abductions.

>> Our mission is to find families whose children are missing till this day... >> (speaking Russian): >> NARRATOR: Now on FRONTLINE, Children of Ukraine.

♪ ♪ >> (speaking Ukrainian): (speaking Russian): >> (speaking Russian): >> NARRATOR: Since the start of the war, thousands of Ukrainian children have been taken and held in Russian-controlled territory.

>> (speaking Ukrainian): >> NARRATOR: This is the story of Ukrainian families and investigators trying to track down missing children and collect evidence of alleged abductions.

>> Basically, they try to erase our identity as Ukrainians.

They try to impose their distorted version of history.

We're still hoping to bring them back home.

They are still our children.

♪ ♪ (swing squeaking) ♪ ♪ >> (speaking Russian): ♪ ♪ (explosion roars) ♪ ♪ (explosion pounds) >> NARRATOR: When Russia began to bombard Ukraine in the early days of the invasion, Nadya was no longer in Mariupol.

But most of her family were still in the city.

>> (speaking Russian): (glass clanking) >> NARRATOR: Nadya's sister tried to escape with her children, husband, and parents.

The streets of Mariupol were increasingly dangerous.

The Russian troops were now advancing through the city.

The family was crammed into one car.

>> (speaking Russian): >> (speaking Russian, echoing) >> NARRATOR: They came under attack.

The car was riddled with bullets.

>> (speaking Russian): (exhales) ♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: Nadya's mom told her that her three-year-old nephew Max was taken to the hospital.

But soon afterwards, as Russian forces swept through the city, the boy disappeared.

>> (speaking Russian): ♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: Max's older brother and sister survived the attack.

But with their mother dead, Nadya arranged for them to come to live with her in Western Ukraine.

>> (talking in background) (speaking Russian): >> What do you remember about your little brother?

>> (speaking Russian): >> Do you remember what happened when you were in the car?

When the loud gunshots happened?

>> (speaking Russian): >> NARRATOR: Max's family thinks he's been taken to Russian territory, like thousands of other Ukrainian children.

♪ ♪ >> (inhales) (speaking Russian): (crowd cheering and chanting) >> (speaking Russian over loudspeaker) >> NARRATOR: Russia has said it's been relocating Ukrainian children as part of a mass humanitarian effort.

A year into the war, President Vladimir Putin held a televised rally featuring children thanking Russian soldiers for rescuing them.

>> (speaking Russian): (sniffles) >> (speaking Russian): (crowd cheers, chanting) >> NARRATOR: In a statement, the Russian government told us that Ukrainian children have been relocated to ensure their safety and to provide medical care and education.

(crowd cheering) Putin's children's commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, has overseen the operation.

She claims to have five adopted children of her own, including one from Mariupol.

>> (speaking Russian): >> Mm-hmm.

>> (continues in Russian): >> (speaking Russian): >> NARRATOR: But in March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against President Putin and his children's commissioner for the alleged war crime of unlawful deportation of children from occupied areas of Ukraine.

♪ ♪ The Kremlin dismissed the charges as "outrageous."

>> (speaking Russian) (crowd cheering and applauding) (people talking in background) >> NARRATOR: A team of Ukrainian investigators is now collecting evidence they are hoping will be used for the International Criminal Court case.

They work for a human rights group, the IPHR, and are traveling through recently liberated territories across Ukraine.

♪ ♪ >> Our mission is to find families whose children are missing till this day.

And we're trying to collect all the evidences and information about such cases so that our lawyers could qualify it after, whether it was a war crime or a crime against humanity.

♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: On this day, the team is heading for the city of Kherson, in the southeast of Ukraine.

It was occupied by Russian troops for the first eight months of the war, and control of some neighborhoods is still fiercely contested.

♪ ♪ They've come here to speak with the head of a Ukrainian children's home about the alleged abduction of 15 children in October 2022.

♪ ♪ >> (speaking Ukrainian): >> NARRATOR: He says some children were smuggled out into the care of distant relatives.

>> (speaking Ukrainian): >> NARRATOR: For three months, the Russians left them alone.

Then a group of soldiers arrived.

(static buzzes) (static buzzes) >> (speaking Ukrainian): ♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: He says the security cameras were turned off.

(static buzzes) And then soldiers brought a group of 15 Ukrainian children from a nearby school and left them in his care.

Three months later, he says they returned and took the children away again.

>> (speaking Ukrainian): (Russian pop song playing) >> NARRATOR: Russian-occupied Crimea is home to many summer camps for kids.

But since the war began, some of these camps have become holding facilities for Ukrainian children.

The IPHR team thinks thousands of children from Kherson region may have ended up in camps like this.

>> (speaking Ukrainian): >> NARRATOR: In its statement, the Russian government said that parents had voluntarily sent their children on vacation to protect them from ongoing military action.

(accordion playing, people singing) This is footage posted online in June 2022 from inside a Crimean camp named Delfin.

The children can be seen learning patriotic Russian songs.

>> (singing in Russian): >> (speaking Ukrainian): >> NARRATOR: A pro-Russian news agency published this video in October 2022, stating that it showed Ukrainian schoolchildren arriving in Crimea for placement in camps, and that the children would be given lessons in Russian language, literature, and history.

The Russian authorities have said that family members have always been welcome to collect their children from camps, but that the situation on the front lines hasn't always allowed it.

♪ ♪ >> (speaking Russian) >> NARRATOR: In Ukraine's capital, a group of women are preparing for a dangerous journey.

>> (speaking Ukrainian): >> NARRATOR: This afternoon, they'll be setting off for Russia.

>> (speaking Ukrainian): (talking in background) >> MAN (speaking Ukrainian): >> WOMAN (speaking Ukrainian): >> NARRATOR: The women are working with the humanitarian group Save Ukraine, which has been helping families get safe passage into Russia to retrieve their children.

Their chances are uncertain.

Some previous attempts succeeded, negotiating with Russian officials on the ground, but others have been intercepted and turned back.

>> (speaking Ukrainian) ♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: Among those making the journey is Olha, who is trying to retrieve her granddaughters Vlada and Anastasia.

>> (speaking Russian): >> NARRATOR: Her route needs to avoid front lines, and will take her west out of Kyiv, through Poland and Belarus, around 2,000 miles, to Russian-annexed Crimea.

Olha says she originally agreed to send her granddaughters to a camp in Crimea after a pro-Russian teacher convinced her it would be a two-week vacation from the war.

They've now been gone for five months.

Anastasia sent these pictures from inside the camp to her grandmother.

She said she'd been forced to sing pro-Russian songs.

The team at Save Ukraine is concerned that the girls may be put up for adoption.

>> (speaking Ukrainian): ♪ ♪ >> (speaking Russian): (typing) >> NARRATOR: Nadya is still trying to find her nephew Max, who disappeared after surviving the attack in Mariupol.

He'd now be four years old.

>> (speaking Russian): >> NARRATOR: She has been trying to find out more about the day Max disappeared.

♪ ♪ >> (speaking Russian): ♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: She sends Max's photo to several search agencies.

>> (speaking Russian) >> NARRATOR: And her mother, Lyudmyla, appears on Ukrainian television to appeal for help.

>> (speaking Russian) >> (speaking Ukrainian): >> (speaking Russian): (video continues on computer) ♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: A family friend has also taken up the search.

Elizaveta was a colleague of Max's father, Nikolai.

In the days after the attack on their car, she became convinced that both Max and Nikolai were still alive.

>> (speaking Ukrainian): ♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: Mariupol is still under Russian occupation, so it's almost impossible for her to get reliable information from the city.

(people talking in background) >> NARRATOR: Early on, she says she found a Russian lawyer who agreed to help her.

At first, the news seemed positive.

>> (speaking Russian): >> NARRATOR: But five months later, the lawyer tells her a different story.

>> (speaking Russian): ♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: But Max's family still believes he's alive.

Their search continues.

They give a photograph of Max to a Ukrainian private intelligence firm, Molfar, which specializes in investigating war crimes and tracing missing children.

One of the Molfar investigators agrees to an interview as long as we conceal her identity.

>> Our work is a bit secret, and some secrets we cannot show to the public, because it can be dangerous for me if we investigate the war criminal cases.

Of course, the opposite side, the Russian cyber services' hackers, if they want to investigate our identity, they can make our life not safe.

Mainly, we use very advanced technologies, face recognition, artificial intelligence technologies.

And, you know, that technician progress now is higher than it was even five years ago, and we can use all specter of the technologies.

>> NARRATOR: After several weeks, Molfar comes up with a photograph of a boy who resembles Max, and is up for adoption in the far east of Russia.

Save Ukraine has also been helping with the search for Max.

>> (speaking Ukrainian): >> OLIA (speaking Ukrainian): >> FEDOSENKO: >> OLIA: ♪ ♪ >> (talking softly) >> NARRATOR: The IPHR team is planning a risky trip to territory taken back from Russia.

They're hoping to gather more evidence to give to the International Criminal Court.

♪ ♪ >> There are a lot of cases we already documented about our young boys.

They put them in these military camps and trying to re-educate them politically, ideologically.

>> NARRATOR: The team has heard about a 15-year-old boy named Artem, who disappeared from his school in Kupyansk.

The town was taken over by Russia just three days into the war.

It was occupied for more than six months, but now the Russians have been driven out, and the IPHR team can go in.

They've been told that Artem has recently made it back to his family.

(Afanasiev speaking Ukrainian) (both speaking Ukrainian) >> AFANASIEV: ♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: There's a constant threat of being bombed by Russian drones.

The front is about nine miles away.

♪ ♪ Artem agrees to talk to the team at a quiet location near his home.

He says he was at school when a convoy of Russian minibuses arrived to take him and his classmates away.

>> (speaking Ukrainian): >> AFANASIEV: >> (speaking Russian): >> Mm-hmm.

>> (speaking Russian): >> (speaking Ukrainian): >> (speaking Russian): >> (speaking Ukrainian): >> (speaking Russian): >> Mm-hmm.

>> NARRATOR: This is where he ended up, the Perevalsk Special Correctional Boarding School in Russian-controlled Luhansk.

>> (speaking Russian): >> GIRL 2: >> NARRATOR: Z is a pro-war Russian propaganda motif.

>> (speaking Russian): >> ALL: >> NARRATOR: He says his phone was confiscated and he couldn't call his parents.

♪ ♪ Photographs published on the school's website show him in class.

>> HUTOROV: >> AFANASIEV: >> HUTOROV: >> AFANASIEV: >> HUTOROV: >> NARRATOR: The Russian government said in its statement that Artem and his fellow students had been relocated to protect them from Ukrainian shelling, and that Russia had tried to contact the children's families.

They said it's "hardly surprising" that a Russian school would have "due regard for national symbols, including the country's flag and anthem."

♪ ♪ >> The main purpose is to erase our national identity by this ideological, political, cultural, and sometimes even military re-education.

Um, Russians tried to, like, discourage us, and obviously, they want us to lose our identity and obey to their narratives.

And that's what Artem was, like, he refused to do that and he tried to confront them.

But obviously, he's just a child, and he was really scared.

>> NARRATOR: After six months in the camp, Artem says he got some unexpected news.

>> (speaking Ukrainian): ♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: This is the moment Artem was reunited with his mother.

She'd managed to make the difficult journey to Luhansk with the help of Save Ukraine, and the school officials handed over her son without protest.

♪ ♪ >> AFANASIEV (speaking Ukrainian): >> HUTOROV: (people talking in background) >> NARRATOR: In March 2023, Olha and the group of other Ukrainian women began their long journey from Kyiv to try to rescue their children.

By then, Olha's granddaughters had been in Russian-occupied Crimea for five months.

(man speaking Ukrainian) (Fedosenko replying) (speaking Ukrainian): ♪ ♪ >> (speaking Russian) >> NARRATOR: Olha's journey took her to Belarus by train.

>> (speaking Russian) >> NARRATOR: And then into Russia by plane.

But in Moscow, Save Ukraine says the women were detained and interrogated by Russian authorities.

They eventually were allowed to continue, but not far from where her granddaughters were being held, Olha collapsed and died.

>> FEDOSENKO (in Ukrainian): (car approaching) ♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: Some Ukrainian children have managed to escape from Russian territory on their own.

Serhiy is 17 years old.

He returned to Ukraine two months ago, crossing the border using a copy of his birth certificate that Save Ukraine had managed to get to him.

>> (speaking Ukrainian): >> NARRATOR: After his escape, he was reunited with his family before going to college.

Now he's returning home to be interviewed by the IPHR.

(both speaking indistinctly) (all greeting) (Cherednichenko speaks playfully, girl squeals) (Cherednichenko speaking indistinctly) (girl babbling) ♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: For the IPHR, Serhiy's story offers insight into how some Ukrainian teenagers have been persuaded to go to Russia.

He says he was playing soccer in the occupied town of Velykyi Burluk when Russian soldiers approached, offering him cigarettes, alcohol, a house, and a car if he agreed to go with them.

>> (speaking Ukrainian): (sizzling) >> NARRATOR: Serhiy's father says that the soldiers learned that he had been adopted, and said this was not recognized under Russian law.

To them, Serhiy was an orphan.

>> (speaking Ukrainian): ♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: In Russia, Serhiy says he was enrolled in Valuisky Industrial Technicians School.

He would spend almost a year there.

>> (speaking Ukrainian): >> NARRATOR: But Serhiy says he quickly regretted his decision to leave Ukraine when he realized he could end up being forced to join the Russian army.

>> (speaking Ukrainian): >> NARRATOR: He says he saw his name on a list to be sent to a camp, where he'd receive military training to fight against Ukraine.

He'd heard reports of other Ukrainian boys who'd been trained as soldiers for the Russian army.

>> (speaking Ukrainian): >> NARRATOR: Just two hours before he was due to be taken to military training, he says he fled.

With help from Save Ukraine, he was guided to a humanitarian corridor.

He says Russian soldiers briefly stopped him, and they beat him before letting him go.

>> (speaking Ukrainian): ♪ ♪ >> So we're going to bring this case to our lawyers, and with some help of our analytics, they are going to qualify this crime.

And of course, he already got some psychological help from Center for Protection of Children Human Rights.

(women and children exclaiming) ♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: Many of the children recently rescued from Russia receive counseling at the offices of Save Ukraine.

Many returnees describe being subjected to Russian propaganda.

But some say they were also kept in isolation.

♪ ♪ >> FEDOSENKO (speaking Ukrainian): >> NARRATOR: 17-year-old Vlad was held in Russian camps for around eight months.

>> FEDOSENKO (speaking Ukrainian): >> NARRATOR: He says a guard then threatened him.

>> (speaking Russian): >> (speaking indistinctly) >> NARRATOR: Outside the office, a new arrival.

(men speaking Ukrainian) (all greeting) >> NARRATOR: Weeks after her grandmother's death, Anastasia has come home.

Save Ukraine helped to secure her release.

Her grandfather is here to meet her, but her sister Vlada is not with her.

Anastasia says when Vlada heard her grandmother had died, she decided not to come back to Ukraine.

>> (speaking Russian): ♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: Anastasia is home at last, but the city of Kherson is still not safe.

>> (speaking Russian): >> NARRATOR: She says she initially left Kherson willingly.

>> (speaking Russian): ♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: The IPHR team is in Kherson to interview her.

>> (speaking Ukrainian): >> NARRATOR: On the edges of the city, black smoke from nearby shelling.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (dog barking in distance) The team meets Anastasia in a park and gives her a flak jacket, in case a Russian shell lands nearby.

They ask her about life in the camp.

>> (speaking Russian): >> NARRATOR: After six months, she says that she and her sister were told they would be fostered by Russian families.

>> (speaking Russian): >> NARRATOR: Since she returned home, she has spoken to her sister on the phone.

Vlada told her she has now agreed to live with a Russian foster family.

>> (speaking Russian): >> NARRATOR: Anastasia thinks her sister has been brainwashed.

(swing squeaking) >> (speaking Russian): (explosions echoing in distance) >> (speaking Ukrainian): (explosions continue) Nastya, go, go, go, go, go.

>> (speaking Russian): >> Go, go, go, go, go.

(speaking Ukrainian) >> (speaking Russian): (explosion pounds in distance) (explosions echoing in distance) (can clatters) ♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: As of early 2024, a total of 388 children had been rescued from Russian territory, according to Ukrainian officials.

Among them, the 15 children taken from Kherson Children's Home.

Russia claims that all the students taken from Kupyansk with Artem are back with their families.

And that all children who wanted to return home from the camps in Crimea have now done so.

But the Ukrainian government says that more than 19,000 children are still being held illegally by Russia.

♪ ♪ (people talking in background) >> (speaking Russian): >> NARRATOR: Max has been missing for more than two years.

In spite of the initial hopes, Nadya is now convinced that the boy up for adoption in Eastern Russia is not Max after all.

>> (speaking Russian): (door squeaking in background) (woman talking softly) >> (speaking Russian) >> (speaking Russian): (kids speaking Russian) >> (speaking Russian): >> NADYA: >> NASTYA: ♪ ♪ >> NADYA: (TV playing in background) ♪ ♪ >> Go to pbs.org/frontline for a Q&A with the director about making this film.

>> What do you remember about your little brother?

>> (speaking Russian): >> And see all our coverage of the war in Ukraine.

Connect with FRONTLINE on Facebook, Instagram and X, formerly Twitter, and stream anytime on the PBS app, Youtube or pbs.org/frontline.

Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org >> For more on this and other "FRONTLINE" programs, visit our website at pbs.org/frontline.

♪ ♪ FRONTLINE's "Children of Ukraine" is available on Amazon Prime Video.

♪ ♪