The Catholic Church in Ukraine is working with Rome to try to document and help thousands of children in eastern Ukraine who have been taken by Russian authorities into Russia during the three-year war between the two countries, Ukraine’s Catholic primate told EWTN News.

“Those children has been beaten, even tortured,” said Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the Catholic patriarch of Kyiv-Halych, during an interview with EWTN News In Depth broadcast Friday, Feb. 21.

“We have to be aware that those children, the most vulnerable persons, they are experiencing the biggest disregard or biggest jeopardy in that situation,” he said.

Many of the children who have subsequently returned to Ukraine are showing signs of emotional trauma, he said.

“They are silent for months. We have to really commit to rehabilitating these children,” Archbishop Shevchuk said in the interview, which was conducted in both English and Spanish. “Can you imagine children taken from their relatives? The imprisoned children. My heart really hurts a lot.”

‘Thousands Have Been Taken’

In December 2024, the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health published research that found that the Russian government has moved thousands of Ukrainian children into Russia since invading Ukraine in February 2022.

The children fall into four groups, said Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab, during a podcast interview in December with The Telegraph. Some  were taken from institutions, some were picked up from the battlefield, some were taken from their families after the fall of Mariupol to the Russians in May 2022, and some were “camp kids” taken away for reeducation.

How many?

“Nineteen to 20,000, it is safe to say that is the ballpark, but we don’t know what the ceiling is,” Raymond said during the December interview. “And anyone who says they do is either uninformed or lying.”

Russian officials have acknowledged moving Ukrainian children into Russia, but have said they have done so for humanitarian reasons.

Archbishop Shevchuk told EWTN News In Depth he is grateful to Pope Francis and to Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the archbishop of Bologna, Italy, whom the Pope has employed as a peace envoy to the region.

“We work hard through the mediation of the Holy See. A special mission of the Cardinal Zuppi entrusted him by the Holy Father to detect each one [of the] children and each personal story of the children,” Archbishop Shevchuk said.

The archbishop also spoke last week at Washington’s Hudson Institute about hisconcerns about the children.

He described the forced deportation of Ukrainian children as “one of the most horrifying crimes of this war.” 

“Thousands have been taken from occupied territories and placed in Russian families, orphanages, or so-called re-education camps,” he said. “These children are forced to forget their Ukrainian identity; many aren’t even back from Russia. Many are even given new names.”

“Each deported child represents another family torn apart by war,” Archbishop Shevchuk added. 

 

Forgiveness, Truth Are Key

In recent days, U.S. President Donald Trump has blamed Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for prolonging the war, even suggesting on Feb. 19 that he may bear responsibility for the war’s beginning by not negotiating a solution before Russia invaded Ukraine.

Asked about that by EWTN News, Archbishop Shevchuk said he finds such claims disheartening, saying that the war started because of what he called “the neo-colonial ambitions of Russia.”

“Well, we are going through big distress and disorientation, because, very often, even from the U.S. side, we detect some clear messages of the Russian propaganda. So we would like to invite U.S. politicians to come and visit us in Ukraine — not to believe in the Russian propaganda, even transmitted during the official meetings. Please come and touch down the reality in Kyiv. Come and visit our cathedral. We will host you,” Archbishop Shevchuk said.

Ukrainians crave peace, he said. He added that peace talks should center not on territory won or lost but on the people who live there.

“I’m a voice of those people right now. Please protect those people. Think about people and not territories, money,” Archbishop Shevchuk said. “Because if economy, money will prevail over the dignity and sanctity of human life, that will be the end of any kind of democracy.”

Amid the horror in Ukraine, he said, the Catholic Church has gotten stronger.

The vast majority of Ukrainians are members of an Orthodox Church not in communion in Rome, but the Catholic Church during the past three has grown from 7.5% of the country’s population to 12%, Archbishop Shevchuk said.

He said the Catholic cathedral in Kyiv became a well-known shelter during the early days of the invasion for residents of the city who could not return to their apartments.

Citing the divisions between the Russian Orthodox Church and the other Christian denominations in Ukraine, he said it’s sad that religion in the war “became a weapon.”

“We are witnessing a very sad event of the weaponization of religion, when religion, church, is used as weapon to kill the people. So it is why we pray for the conversions to those who are killing us,” Archbishop Shevchuk said.

“We support the people, and we try to be able to love even our enemies. It sounds strange. Many people would say: 'How is it possible to be obedient to this command of Jesus — to forget, to love your enemies, when each day they kill more and more people?’” he said.

While the divisions are real, he said, all people involved in the conflict must see each other as children of God.

“But we’re trying to withstand against the process of dehumanization, in those circumstances,” Archbishop Shevchuk said. “So in the grassroots communities, we are brothers. And I hope that the work of the Holy Spirit, which, witnessing among the simple people, will bring to the renovation, transformation and maybe reform even, inside of the Russian Orthodoxy.”

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