From the KyivPost, Aug. 16:
"OPINION:
Catalog of Children and Catalog of Betrayal
By Dr. Orhan Dragas
The boy’s blue eyes look directly at you from the screen. Under the
photo is written: “Calm, obedient, six years old, blue eyes, blond
hair.” As if this is a dog from an asylum and not a living child
kidnapped from the occupied part of Ukraine. As if identity is something
that can be edited in a filter – by gender, eye color, age, and
temperament – and offered to anyone who wants it with a click.
Russia has digitized what slave traders have done for centuries:
stripped hundreds of children of their names, histories, and families,
and turned them into a catalog. According to official figures, more than
19,500 Ukrainian children have been confirmed as abducted and deported
to Russia. The true figures may be far higher, as the occupied
territories are closed to international observers and the children’s
tracks are systematically covered up, as are schools, hospitals, and
maternity wards destroyed.
This is not just kidnapping. It is a strategy of destruction – twofold
and intentional. First, towns are destroyed and houses burned down. Then
children are taken from the rubble hundreds of kilometers away, and
their names, nationalities and identities are changed. The goal is
clear: they are to grow up without knowing who they are, without
speaking their mother tongue, and to become part of someone else’s
history.
There is a logic behind this barbarism. Destroying civilian facilities
means destroying everyday life, safety, and health. Kidnapping children
means destroying the future. Russia is doing this openly, now also
digitally, showing that it has zero regard for international law. On the
internet, children are arranged as objects: “cheerful,” “reserved,” and
“adaptable.” The description does not say that they may have watched
their parents being taken away by soldiers the day before or that they
slept in basements at night while bombs fell overhead.
Anyone who looks at these pages will see what the world still refuses to
admit: this is a war in which war crimes are not hidden – they are
advertised.
The catalog doesn’t say these children may have last hugged their
parents at a makeshift checkpoint, with a rifle aimed at them. It
doesn’t say that some mothers, knowing the Russians would take them
away, told their children to remember the songs they sang, the color of
the house, and the smell of the bakery down the street, as that may be
the only connection to home when they change their names and passports.
Behind these “calm” and “obedient” descriptions lies a silence that can
only be heard by someone who has lost everything.
And while Russia transforms stolen children into a catalog, US President
Donald Trump, announces a meeting with Russian President Vladimir
Putin. Location: Alaska. Date: Aug. 15. Topic: Ukraine – but without
Ukraine. Trump is already talking openly about “territorial concessions”
and a “deal” that he believes could bring peace.
“Zelensky must be prepared to give up some territory,” Trump said, as if
he were negotiating the moving of a fence and not the future of a
sovereign state that has been fighting for survival for three and a half
years. He repeated several times that “Ukraine has no say in this.”
This attitude is not only politically short-sighted – it is morally
bankrupt. Instead of insisting on the right of the victims of aggression
to decide their own fate, the president of the world’s greatest power
gives legitimacy to the logic of violence and panders to the aggressor.
Instead of siding with those who defend their children, he thinks about
how to make it easier for those who kidnap them.
Zelensky’s answer was clear, without restraint and without a diplomatic
“maybe.” “Without Ukraine, the negotiations on Ukraine cannot be
conducted,” he said. No concessions, no waivers, no backroom deals. This
is not stubbornness; this is the basic logic of international law and
sovereignty.
Because any “peace” concluded without Ukraine would be the same as a
list of abducted children without names – paper without life. Any deal
struck between Trump and Putin in Alaska without Ukraine at the table
would be a continuation of Russian aggression by other means.
In political theory, negotiations are conducted to find a just solution.
In the lives of besieged people, negotiations are conducted to preserve
dignity and life. For Ukraine, negotiating without your seat at the
table would be like a father signing the sale of a house while his
children stand behind a wall with their hands tied. That’s not a
compromise – it’s a surrender.
Imagine the maternity hospital in Kamianske that was razed to the ground
by a Russian missile, killing the pregnant Diana. Imagine a catalog of
children from Luhansk. Both scenes are part of the same campaign – to
eliminate the future of Ukraine. One does this with weapons, the other
with a bureaucratic and digital process.
Trump’s approach to Ukraine aligns perfectly with this matrix, as it
treats Ukraine as a tool for negotiation, rather than as a people
entitled to life, freedom, and future. In both cases, subjectivity
disappears: the child becomes “quiet, obedient” without origin; the
state becomes “suitable for exchange” without will.
The tragedy of Ukraine is not only that it is losing cities and
children. The tragedy is that the world, accustomed to the images of
war, is beginning to see them as commonplace. When we become accustomed
to ruins and cataloged children, we become part of the problem. For
indifference is the quietest ally of violence.
The West, which used to be able to speak out, is now increasingly opting
for silence. Keeping silent about the digital sale of Ukrainian
children is equal to accepting that it is happening. And the longer the
silence continues, the deeper the children are rooted in the system that
has abducted them. Each additional year makes it harder to return, each
additional school year erases another layer of memories of home.
Trump’s admiration for Putin and his willingness to accept his logic
sends a signal not just to Ukraine, but to all small states: If they
bomb you long enough and kidnap your children, maybe one day the “great
powers” will make you thank them for the piece of land they let you
have.
Those who remain silent today will one day ask themselves what they did
while children from Mariupol and Luhansk appeared in online catalogs and
maternity wards turned into craters. The answer will not be pleasant.
And history will record it as clearly as every betrayal is recorded –
without apologies and without forgetting.
In Ukraine today, there is a line beyond which the law ceases to apply
and the law of the strongest begins. The moment borders and people
become the subject of negotiations, the state is on its way to
disappearing. That is why every child, and every piece of land must be
returned – not out of pity, but because it is the only form of justice
that makes sense.
The catalog of abducted children and the meeting in Alaska are not
separate stories. They are two faces of the same temptation: to avoid
inconvenience, should we accept that crime is rewarded? Those who agree
to this become part of the same order that turns children into catalogs
and filters.
Ukraine has already given its answer – in the trenches, under the
rubble, in the columns of refugees, at the negotiating tables. This
answer requires no interpretation: we are not giving up. Now it is up to
the world to decide whether to join this “no” or reject it.
Because peace bought with stolen human lives and stolen land is not
peace. It is a respite that provides the criminals with time to prepare
the next blow.
This is not just a Ukrainian story. Any country
that believes that something like this cannot happen to it should take a
look at these catalogs. It should imagine its children, under foreign
names, in a foreign language, in a foreign history. Today, Ukraine is
not only on the front line but also on the front line of every free
country. And if it falls, the next catalog will not be Ukrainian."
