When he first arrived in his new home in a small village in the Italian Alps in March 2022, 15-year-old Denys* says he felt homesick and confused. He had been put on an overnight bus and relocated along with more than 100 other children from his orphanage in Berdiansk, in eastern Ukraine, which was one of the first areas to be invaded by Russian troops.
“Ukraine was all I knew,” says Denys. “I had never left it my whole life.”
But after he began going to school, making friends and integrating into Italian life, Denys says he no longer wanted to go back home. “I started to realise there was a different way of life I could be living,” he says. “One that didn’t involve airstrikes and poverty, and that could give me better opportunities for my future.”
Thousands of Ukrainian social orphans – children given up to the state or taken away from parents considered unable to care for them – were evacuated overseas after Russia’s invasion in 2022. The relocation was meant to be temporary, but even after the situation stabilised in parts of Ukraine, many of them, such as Denys, refused to return.
Ukrainian officials have repatriated most of the children, but more than 1,500 remain elsewhere in Europe. Some – like Denys – have been aided by Italian courts after their foster parents in Italy defied Kyiv’s repatriation order, citing concerns regarding the children’s wellbeing in a war-torn country with heavily damaged social welfare and public infrastructure.
For Ukraine, already battling a plummeting birthrate and the loss of children abducted by Russia in occupied territories, the failure of some juveniles to return home has become a crisis.
Kateryna Rashevska, a legal expert on war crimes against children in Ukraine, says: “We are losing those who should’ve been the future citizens of our nation. If these children ever actually return to Ukraine, they will have limited Ukrainian language, culture, history and identity, which also poses a threat to our future heritage and demography.”
The situation escalated in April after a 15-year-old boy who had been evacuated to Italy in 2022 was legally adopted by an Italian family, despite having parents and two sisters back in Ukraine who wanted him to return home. A court in Italy overruled Ukrainian laws – in May 2022, shortly after the war started, Ukraine had suspended international adoptions to prevent trafficking or wrongful adoptions.
Yuliya Donnichenko, a Ukrainian national based in Italy who has overseen evacuations to southern Italy and repatriations back to Ukraine for about 100 orphans, says there have been many childless couples who she sensed were taking advantage of the unstable situation to bypass strict international adoption laws and get a Ukrainian child.
“I know that they meant the best for these kids, that they became attached to them and wanted the best for their future, away from a war-torn nation. But what they don’t understand is that by [seeking adoption] they’re putting at risk an already fragile situation,” she says.
“It might not seem like a lot – just a few more hundreds compared with the already 20,000 lost to Russia – but to us every child counts. It’s the future of our nation.”
Some accuse Ukraine of not being prepared to offer stable conditions and a fair future to a new generation, with the reality of return for many of the children different from what they were promised.
Evelina, now 18, was repatriated after almost two years spent with an Italian foster family in Sicily, and was assigned to an adoptive Ukrainian family on the border with Romania. The family already had several foster children under their care, making her living conditions “not much different from living in an orphanage”, she says.
Evelina says that when she returned home, she had her phone confiscated for more than a year, as she was not allowed to be in touch with the Italian family who hosted her throughout her stay there.
“I was confined at home and didn’t go to school. I would only leave my room for an English class once a week or church on Sunday,” she says. “I felt very depressed; I didn’t understand why they made me return to live like this.”
When she was finally given a new phone in autumn 2024, Evelina says she managed to open a Telegram account and spent hours talking to her Italian foster mother – the only mental escape from otherwise long, boring days. “I missed her. I constantly begged her to come pick me up and bring me back to Sicily,” she says.
Evelina says her new family would record videos of her going up and down the street outside her home, as proof of her doing a minimum amount of exercise and getting out of the house. After she shared her concerns with the Italian family, Evelina’s phone was confiscated again, and her WhatsApp and Telegram accounts were permanently deleted.
Now she is 18, Evelina says she cannot wait to leave Ukraine and return to the EU: “It made no sense to force our return since most of us had planned to leave anyway after turning 18, thanks to the connections we developed in Europe.
“After all,” she says. “It was unfair to pretend we’d just get a quick taste of freedom in Europe and then head back to a place that can’t offer us as much as an EU country can right now.”
Denys says he and almost 100 orphans evacuated to Rota d’Imagna, in the hills of Bergamo, received their repatriation order from Kyiv in August 2024. He was 17 at the time of the call to return, which meant that setting foot in Ukraine for him – as well as other boys in his age range – could mean being drafted into the war. “I was utterly frightened, but the authorities didn’t listen to our concerns,” he says.
During one-on-one meetings in Italy with the orphans supposed to return, Denys says Ukrainian social workers would use “intimidating language and even swearwords if we showed any signs of resistance”, with younger ones “promised candies and PlayStations on their arrival in Ukraine”.
He says: “They would use any possible, misleading argument to convince us to accept the return. They promised us we’d be adopted or reunited with family relatives we still had back home. All fake promises they couldn’t guarantee for sure.”
With the help of Italian courts, Denys managed to stay in Italy, where he now works as a waiter and hopes to remain for the foreseeable future. He says those who ended up returning tell him they regret the choice, and that many stay not with adoptive parents but at institutions where there is no running water or electricity, and where up to six people live in the same room.
He says they regularly have to hide in bunkers, as even western provinces in Ukraine are targeted by Russian attacks. “This proves that they didn’t have our best interests and safety at heart,” he says.
Maksym, another orphan from the Rota d’Imagna group, said he reluctantly accepted repatriation, only to move to Germany three months later when he turned 18. “Ukraine changed too much over the past few years. There’s nothing for us young people there. My future is in the EU.”
Diego Mosca, who supervised the group of Ukrainian orphans in Rota d’Imagna, says the children had been “tossed around like a tennis ball between two sides” by the repatriation dispute.
“This situation has traumatised them and will forever leave wounds on their psyche. Providing mental health support to those who returned should be a priority over demographic needs.”
* Name changed to protect identity
