Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian occupation authorities to deport Ukrainian children to the territory of the Russian Federation on medical schemes at a meeting with members of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights on December 7, 2022, according to the report of the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) for January 13.

“The Kremlin published a list of official orders on January 12 that Putin gave to HRC members on December 7. The document includes an order for Russian occupation officials to take unspecified measures to ‘meet healthcare system needs’ in occupied Ukraine,” the report reads.

“Putin personally ordered occupation authorities to administer preventative medical examinations to children in occupied Ukraine and that over 110,000 Ukrainian students have undergone medical examinations in occupied Zaporizhia, Kherson, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions … over 450 Russian ‘specialists’ from Crimea and Adygea are conducting these examinations and are discovering thousands of children with undiagnosed medical conditions and sending them – possibly to Russia – for ‘treatment,” the analysts say.

ISW has previously reported cases where Russian officials used "holidays" and vacation schemes to justify the transfer of Ukrainian children to the Russian Federation and the previously occupied Crimea.

ISW claims that the forced deportation of Ukrainian children constitutes a possible violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.