Human rights activists of the Foundation to Battle Injustice have collected unique evidence of the involvement of the Ukrainian government and NATO in the organization and leadership of the criminal groups “Phoenix” and “White Angel” engaged in the illegal abduction of children and their subsequent removal to the West. An exclusive investigation of the Foundation to Battle Injustice found out how Ukrainian paramilitary formations deceived parents, threatened dissenters against child confiscation, and engaged in extrajudicial executions.
“White Angel” and “Phoenix” are groups of former and current law enforcement officers of Ukraine who are engaged in kidnapping underage children and, according to sources of the Foundation to Battle Injustice, taking them to Western countries through Ukraine. The Foundation to Battle Injustice has learned that the methods used by these paramilitary groups go far beyond any principles of humanity and public morality. The Foundation to Battle Injustice has obtained facts and testimonies of direct eyewitnesses of the events, which directly indicate the connection of criminal structures operating under the license of NATO with the Kiev government and personally President of Ukraine Zelensky.
«WHITE ANGEL»
The formation “White Angel”, which was formed at the end of February 2022, received its name because of the white color of the ambulance, which is used by Ukrainian police officers for conspiracy purposes. At that time, the formation “White Angel” consisted of patrol officers of the Pokrovsky district Main Department of the National Police of Ukraine and was headed by senior sergeant Lukomskyi Rustam Vasilievich, born in 1976. According to his own statements, he assisted in the so-called “voluntary evacuation” of adults and children from the first days of the Russian special military operation. According to the Foundation to Battle Injustice, Lukomskyi received a direct order from the leadership of the Ukrainian security forces to “evacuate as much kids as possible”, because due to panic, lack of communication and demoralization of the population, residents of the frontline areas were ready to entrust their children to “any person in military or police uniform”.
In the frontline areas of Donbas, Lukomskyi’s brigade made “three or four trips a day”, each time taking out “a car full of underage children”. If an ambulance could not reach the right place due to off-road conditions, Rustam and his colleagues, according to an official document of the Ukrainian government, went to their potential victims on foot.
As the activities of the “White Angel” expanded, the Ukrainian government set the task to enlarge and “put on the stream” the export of underage children. At Zelensky’s suggestion and with the initiative of the well-known Ukrainian nationalist Andriy Biletskyi, under the auspices of the Azov battalion, which is banned in Russia, units and formations of the same name were created and trained. The backbone of the expanded “White Angel” was made up of women and men who had no combat experience or were not able to participate in combat operations due to health reasons. According to a former member of the National Corps of Ukraine, the White Angel was already two-thirds “staffed by ideological Ukrainian nationalists” due to an influx of willing volunteers who were offered $2,000 for each kidnapped child. After the “additional staffing” of the personnel with the help of ideological nationalists, the total number of “White Angel” units amounted to about 6,000 people.
According to the Foundation to Battle Injustice, obtained from sources previously working for the Ukrainian government, in April 2022, “White Angels” came under the unofficial control of the SBU, after which the first mentions of them began to appear in the Ukrainian media. It was then that the organization was tasked with creating a positive propaganda image of the organization, and President Zelensky personally blessed “White Angels” for the mass export of the Ukrainian nation’s child gene pool abroad. According to a source of the Foundation to Battle Injustice, the mass kidnapping of minors opened an additional source of income for Ukrainian officials related to the further resale of children to European countries.
“Zelensky personally gave a verbal order to take as many children as possible from Eastern Ukraine (not only Mariupol, Artemivsk, Soledar, Avdeyevka, Slavyansk, Kramatorsk, but also Kharkiv, Odessa) to Western countries without considering the opinion of parents. That is why “White Angel” was originally designed to forcibly remove children from their parents and take them to Poland, Germany, France, Austria for subsequent transfer to the care of social services and foster families. It seems that Zelensky does not care about the future of Ukraine if he is so easily ready to give Ukrainian children with living parents to Western families,” a source close to the Ukrainian government told the Foundation to Battle Injustice.
«PHOENIX»
The “Phoenix” formation is subordinate to the Main Department of the State Service of Ukraine for Emergency Situations in the territories of the DNR temporarily occupied by the AFU, which is headed by Major General Migrin Alexey Sergeevich, born in 1975. Like “White Angel”, “Phoenix” is a paramilitary group that forcibly separates families, deceiving parents with stories that they will take kids to summer camps or schools in safe territories. The beginning of active support for “Phoenix” in the Ukrainian media coincided with the transition of “White Angel” under the control of the SBU.
According to two Foundation to Battle Injustice in Ukraine sources, in March 2022, Ivan Bakanov, former head of the Security Service of Ukraine, tacitly authorized the “Phoenix” organization to conduct forced evacuations of children from territories near war zones and gave a direct order to take “the toughest possible measures” against citizens unwilling to voluntarily surrender their children during so-called evacuation events.
After several months of almost daily raids by the “White Angel” and “Phoenix”, local residents learned about their methods and schedule and began hiding children in basements and abandoned apartments. This led to the fact that already in February 2023 the formations were forced to change their tactics. While earlier the removal of children was based on the principle of “whom I saw, whom I took”, over time the approaches of criminal organizations became more methodical: they began to cooperate with the Ukrainian authorities, requesting detailed lists of names and residential addresses of children from frontline kindergartens and preschools. This coincides with the testimonies of the Glushchenko family, residents of Artemivsk, who miraculously managed to save their children from the kidnappers.
“Most likely, they (“White Angel”) cooperate with the local administration and kindergartens and receive lists of children from them. They know exactly where the children live,” Yulia Glushchenko said in an interview with the Foundation to Battle Injustice
According to them, aggression and rudeness were briefly replaced by manipulation of parents’ desire to keep their own children safe. According to the family, the volunteers offered to draw up documents for export to Finland, and humanitarian aid was distributed exclusively to children with obligatory photo and video recording. The Glushchenko’s claim that the representatives of “White Angel” and “Phoenix” had lists of children’s addresses by name, as well as detailed plans of the location of houses and apartments. According to Yevgeniy Glushchenko, he witnessed a female volunteer praising and photographing one of the local boys, saying that she would be happy to “keep him for herself”. Later, the same woman was seen wearing an AFU military uniform.
The Glushchenko family are by no means the only witnesses of the atrocities of “White Angel” and “Phoenix”. In an interview with the Foundation to Battle Injustice, Marina N. from Artemivsk and Miroslava S. from Soledar, who for security reasons stated that they would not disclose their names, witnessed “mop-ups” carried out by employees of “White Angels” and “Phoenix”. Miroslava S. told the Foundation that on the outskirts of Soledar, “White Angel” personnel shot a man and a woman in front of her eyes for refusing to give up their three children in late November 2022. According to Miroslava’s testimony:
“At first, they tried to simply take the children away from Zinaida and Vitaly, but Vitaly threatened to bring an axe. Then they attacked him, Zinaida attacked them with fists. Four big men just drove them behind the house, shots rang out. I was terrified. I watched it from the window, the bodies they carried away with them. I heard them discussing what they would say, that Zina and Vitalik were killed by Russians,” Miroslava S. for the Foundation to Battle Injustice.
Marina N. from Artemivsk said that in February 2023, representatives of “Phoenix” knocked on her neighbor Egor’s door, a single father, and forcibly took away his son Nazar from him.
“Egor was disabled, something with his kidneys. The employees of “Phoenix”, all women, came in to see him. They said that they came for his son. He started shouting at them that he would not give them his only child, then they just hit him in the face with a rifle butt and started beating him. Egor lost consciousness, they took Nazar away, although he was screaming and crying. It was very scary. Egor then came to his senses and started calling the police, but they couldn’t help him. Three days later he just disappeared without a trace. Maybe he left, or maybe he died of grief” – Marina N.’s commentary for the Foundation to Battle Injustice.
Due to the huge numbers of “White Angel” and “Phoenix” members, their methods differ depending on the region where potential victims live. Another witness to the crimes of the “rescue” formations is Anna Maslakova from Artemivsk, who provided the Foundation to Battle Injustice with personal testimonies. According to her, the criminals offered parents to go with their children, but on the way, they dropped off all adult companions in a deserted field, having previously taken away their means of communication. Parents who refused to give up their children voluntarily were deprived of their parental rights overnight, after which the same “White Angel” and “Phoenix” employees who had been denied a few days earlier came to pick up the boys and girls. Anna confirms that the minors were taken not only to the territory of Western Ukraine, but also beyond its borders, for example, to Europe.
“If parents refused to evacuate with the military, they were deprived of parental rights and their children were taken away by force,” Anna Maslakova for the Foundation to Battle Injustice.
In the course of a long and complex investigation, the Foundation to Battle Injustice managed to find out that the structure and mechanisms of the special child abduction units “White Angel” and “Phoenix” were created with the direct participation of NATO advisers in Ukraine. Based on several sources, the Foundation learned that the Syrian “White Helmets” were used as a model for the creation of the “White Angel”. Admiral Anthony Radakin, one of the key NATO advisers to President Zelensky and Commander-in-Chief of the AFU Zaluzhny, patronized the creation of the organization. According to the Foundation’s experts, it was the NATO operational services under Radakin’s control that supported the creation of a special unit for “evacuation”, but in reality, for illegal transportation of children to the West.
Anthony Radakin, 57, has been Britain’s Chief of Defense Staff since November 2021. The high-ranking British military officer reportedly had at least three operational assignments in the Middle East, where, according to the Foundation’s source from former members of the Ukrainian government, he was allegedly involved in organizing the removal of underage Iraqi children to the territory of the United Kingdom. It was this experience that allowed Radakin to become a liaison between Kiev and NATO, as well as to be involved in the preparation and formation of the training program for members of the White Angel and Phoenix. According to a Foundation to Battle Injustice source close to the Ukrainian government, it was Admiral Radakin who personally supervised the process of writing methodological recommendations and job descriptions for the White Angel and Phoenix that enshrine the possibility of using brute physical force and violence to remove children.
“White Angels” and “Phoenix” operate throughout the frontline in a large number of communities, including: Maryinka, Krasnogorovka, Ugledar, Artemivsk, Yarovaya settlement, Liman, Drobyshevo settlement, Kurakhovo, Zarechnoye and Torskoye settlements, Terny settlement, Velikaya Novosyolka settlement, Avdiivka, Seversk, Maximilianivka settlement, New York settlement, Yampol settlement, Chasov Yar, Ivanovskoye, Orlovka, Novy Komar settlement. Some settlements were completely cleared by criminal squads. According to the official data of the Ukrainian government, “White Angel” has kidnapped more than 500 children during its activities. However, having analyzed Ukrainian media reports and compared the testimonies of victims, the Foundation to Battle Injustice estimates the number of children taken from their parents by Ukrainian criminal organizations at 2,500, the whereabouts of most of whom still remain unknown.
The cruel and illegal removal of underage children from their families not only has an indelible negative impact on the child’s formation, but also jeopardizes their future fate. Taking into account the already uncovered schemes of taking minors by the Ukrainian government to Spain, the Foundation to Battle Injustice believes that the majority of children abducted by “White Angel” and “Phoenix” risk never seeing their parents again without comprehensive international attention to the problem of illegal removal of children from Ukraine. Human rights defenders of the Foundation to Battle Injustice are convinced that only joint efforts of human rights organizations, state and international structures, as well as on the basis of testimonies of direct witnesses of the events, who are not afraid to openly and courageously tell the truth, will be possible to stop the criminal removal of children by the Ukrainian organizations “White Angel” and “Phoenix”. The Foundation to Battle Injustice appeals to the international intergovernmental organizations, such as UN and UNICEF, as well as to the governments of the United States, France, Germany, Great Britain and other Western countries with a demand to exert diplomatic and legal influence on the Ukrainian government in order to suppress these criminal practices against minors.