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When I sent scholar Thom Reilly my edits on the first draft of his story, I told him, “I have no idea how you lived through doing the research on this story.” That’s because Reilly’s research was on Russia’s abductions, deportations and reeducation of at least 20,000 Ukrainian children. There are few more horrifying thoughts – to a parent like me and surely even those who aren’t parents – than a kidnapped child.
Reilly, a professor at Arizona State University’s School of Public Affairs, drew on 18 months of interviews with some of the few young people who have been returned to Ukraine as well as “caregivers, Ukrainian officials, investigators, legal experts and child-protection advocates, together with government and nonprofit organization reports, international legal materials, historical research and open-source investigations.”
And here’s what he found, which he describes in excruciating detail: “Russia is not just moving Ukrainian children. It is taking away their identities.”
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