A march in London demanding the release of Ukrainian children Russia has abducted, 1 June 2025. Photo: EPA/ANDY RAIN

The Russian-installed authorities in eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk region have created a publicly-accessible catalogue of orphaned Ukrainian children available for adoption, a major Ukrainian children’s welfare charity reported on Wednesday.

Mykola Kuleba, the co-founder and head of Save Ukraine, said the website contained the personal data of 294 children aged up to 17, including their names, headshots, and descriptions of their personalities and hobbies. The photographs appeared to have been removed by Friday, however.

“The way they describe our children is no different from a slave catalogue. This, truly, is child trafficking in the 21st century that the world must stop immediately,” Kuleba said.

Compiled by the Education & Science Ministry of the self-proclaimed “Luhansk People’s Republic,” which has administered the Luhansk region since its annexation by Russia in September 2022, the site allows users to search for children using filters for gender, age, and even hair and eye colour.

One teenager is described as being “sociable, communicative with adults. Friendly to other children. Enjoys sport and drawing. Does what he’s told. Has a normal working capacity. Appropriately self-sufficient for his age.”

Kuleba, who served as the presidential commissioner for children’s rights in Ukraine from 2014–2021, said most of the children listed on the website were born before Luhansk’s occupation by Russian forces in 2022, meaning they previously held Ukrainian citizenship, and had likely either been kidnapped from their families or their parents had died in the fighting.

The Ukrainian authorities estimate that almost 20,000 Ukrainian children have been forcibly taken to Russia, or Russia-occupied territories in eastern Ukraine, since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022.

During tentative peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine held in Istanbul in June, Ukraine’s then-Defence Minister Rustem Umerov presented his Russian counterpart with a list of “several hundred” Ukrainian children he said had been abducted by Russia since 2022 whose release Ukraine was seeking to secure.