A Ukrainian teenager in labor was told she would only receive a life-saving cesarean section if she accepted a Russian passport, Mykola Kuleba, founder of Save Ukraine, told the US Senate on 3 December.
"A teenager mother was told during excruciating childbirth that she would only receive a necessary C-section that would save her life if she accepted a Russian passport," Kuleba testified before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee.
"She reluctantly agreed. Then she was told that the only way that she could take the baby home was if she was listed as Russian on his birth certificate."
This case illustrates how Russian occupation authorities systematically coerce the Ukrainian population into forgetting their connection with Ukraine—part of what witnesses described as a systematic pipeline to erase Ukrainian identity and, ultimately, turn children into soldiers fighting against their own country.
Torture testimony shocks senators
Kuleba also shared testimony from a boy whose friend was killed by Russian forces after they found messages from a Ukrainian soldier on his phone.
"They ripped out his teeth and eyelids. They cut off his fingers," Kuleba said, describing what the surviving child witnessed. The friend died; Russians told his family he succumbed to "a blood clot."
The testimony aligns with findings from a September 2025 report by Save Ukraine and War Child UK, which found that 10% of 200 surveyed children brought back from occupation reported experiencing torture or cruel treatment, while 6% reported sexual violence.
From child to soldier: the four-stage pipeline
Maksym Maksymov, head of Ukraine's Bring Kids Back campaign, outlined Russia's systematic process before senators:
- isolation from families
- identity erasure through forced Russian citizenship at age 14
- indoctrination through re-education camps
- and finally militarization.
"By 18, that imposed citizenship becomes the basis for conscription — to send them to fight the country they were taken from," Maksymov warned.
Kuleba put a number on the outcome: "Every sixth captured Russian soldier from occupied territories" is a young adult "who's been a Ukrainian child who's been brainwashed and forcibly conscripted."
The hearing came just hours before the UN General Assembly voted 91-12 to demand Russia immediately and unconditionally return all abducted Ukrainian children.
Not just deported: Moscow turns Ukrainian children into soldiers, laborers, and Russians, studies show
Network spans four countries
Kateryna Rashevska of Ukraine's Regional Center for Human Rights told senators her organization has documented 165 re-education camps across occupied Ukrainian territories, Russia, Belarus, and North Korea.
Children who resist russification face consequences. In 2024, 87 children in occupied Luhansk were labeled "extremists" or bearers of "destructive ideology" and placed in "social rehabilitation" centers; 76 were sent to psychiatric institutions for "forced treatment," Rashevska testified.
Ukraine has officially verified 19,546 deported children, though Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab estimates the true number at 35,000. Only 1,859 have been returned.
All five witnesses answered "no" when asked if immunity for Putin would be acceptable in any peace deal.
"Ending this war without an accounting for these children would be unconscionable," said Chairman Lindsey Graham.
