Ukraine Asks Vatican to Formalize Mediation to Secure Return of Children and Civilians from Russia

Ukraine has asked the Vatican to formalize its role as a mediator in negotiations to secure the return of Ukrainian children and other civilians taken to Russia during the nearly four-year war, a Kyiv official said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reportedly sent a letter to Pope Francis ahead of a meeting in Rome between the pope and a delegation of returned children and relatives. The delegation described exposure to sustained Russian propaganda and the trauma of being separated from their families.

Kyiv wants the Holy See to convert an informal humanitarian channel that began under Pope Francis — in which Cardinal Matteo Zuppi acted as a papal envoy — into a formal platform for communications between Ukraine and Russia. Iryna Vereshchuk, deputy head of Zelenskyy’s office, told reporters that formalization would create clearer procedures and make it harder for Russia to ignore lists of civilians Kyiv seeks to have returned.

“It’s one thing when we have prisoners of war and there is mutual interest in exchanges,” Vereshchuk said. “But Ukraine is not holding Russian civilians to trade.”

Vereshchuk said that under the informal Zuppi mission, Russian responses sometimes disappeared into a “gray zone.” Formalizing the channel, she argued, would require Moscow to respond when Ukraine submits names through an official platform. The Vatican and the Russian embassy to the Holy See did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Scope of the problem and legal context

Ukrainian officials say they continue to document thousands of cases of children taken to Russian territory during the war. The International Criminal Court in 2023 issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin that accuses him of responsibility for the abduction of children from Ukraine.

Data published by Ukraine’s Bring Kids Back presidential platform record 19,546 children as deported or forcibly transferred. Media reports citing Ukraine’s Human Rights Ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, say 1,247 children had been returned through diplomatic and humanitarian channels as of March 27. Vereshchuk also said Ukraine had identified roughly 2,000 civilians believed to be in Russian custody with assistance from the Red Cross, though she did not clarify whether that figure includes children.

Personal accounts

The returned young people told the pope they had been pressured in school to sing Russia’s national anthem, speak Russian and write pro-Russian letters. They described bullying by classmates and teachers and other forms of indoctrination while living in Russian-controlled areas of Donetsk and other occupied territories.

One returnee, Veronika Vlasova, said she was taken to Russian territory at age 13 and separated from her mother for 14 months. Now 16, she said she was held in a children’s rehabilitation center without access to a phone before eventually returning to Kyiv.

Liudmyla Siryk described a months-long effort to find and bring back her grandson, Oleksandr Radchuk, who was wounded in Mariupol at age 12 in March 2022 and later taken to a hospital in Donetsk. Siryk said she obtained the necessary documents and made a four-day bus journey through Baltic countries and Russia to reach Donetsk and be reunited with him. She said she believes her daughter remains in Russian custody.

The Ukrainian government says it hopes a formal Vatican platform would provide a predictable channel to press for returns and reduce bureaucratic ambiguity. Efforts to document cases and repatriate victims continue alongside diplomatic and legal initiatives.