Teen bedroom art installation shines spotlight on Ukraine’s stolen children | Ukraine

It looks like a typical teenager’s room: football jerseys on the wall, crumpled clothes on the floor, exercise books open on the table. But it is a piece of political art intended to evoke the empty rooms of more than 20,500 Ukrainian children who were illegally taken to Russia.

The work was exhibited at the European Commission’s headquarters in Brussels on Monday; Delegates from 63 countries and international organizations met to discuss how to bring children from Ukraine home. “This is actually a way for someone to step into Ukraine without having to go there,” said Isaac Yeung, one of the installation’s co-creators.

Adding to the uncomfortable atmosphere of the empty room is a barely audible hum punctuated by occasional explosions and howling wind. “It creates tension in your head, in your chest,” said Leung, who works for Bird of Light Ukraine, the NGO behind the installation.

The room belongs to the character Artem, a 13-year-old whose story is a combination of real testimonies from unnamed children. Zhanna Galeeva, creator and president of Bird of Light Ukraine, said the room, with its heavy Soviet furniture and bright early 2000s wallpapers, is instantly recognizable to anyone who grew up in Ukraine. Artem lived with his widowed single mother in the occupied territories of Ukraine and endured months of shelling until Russian soldiers ordered him to send him to a “medical camp” in Crimea. It is a sad and painful reality for thousands of children and their families.

Ukrainian authorities found that more than 20,570 children were unlawfully deported or forcibly transferred to Russia. Only 2,133 people returned. Those who remained were de-identified, brainwashed in military camps, or subjected to forced adoption or institutionalization in 210 locations across Russia and Belarus. Researchers fear this is an underestimate because Russian authorities have falsified identities and erased records.

Ahead of the meeting, Ukraine’s western allies announced new sanctions (asset freezes and travel bans) against individuals and organizations involved in politics: EU foreign ministers agreed to 23 lists and the UK approved 29 lists.

One common target is the so-called warrior centre, the state-led Center for Military Sports Training and Patriotic Education of Youth, which includes cadet-style military training and weapons according to the EU list. The United Kingdom also sanctioned Yulia Velichko, the youth minister of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic in occupied Ukraine, for her role in the deportation of Ukrainian children, including programs that exposed them to Russian ideology and issued passports. Like others on Britain’s longer list, he was placed under EU sanctions in October 2025.

Western allies also announced funds to help track down stolen Ukrainian children. The UK’s Europe minister, Stephen Doughty, told the Guardian that this was “the first important task because we need to understand where these children are, where they are being taken”. He announced that he would give an additional £1.2 million, on top of the £2.8 million Britain pledged last December, to help Ukraine trace the children and verify their identities.

Doughty said: “This is one of the most disgusting and horrific aspects of Russia’s war against Ukraine, not only because of what it is doing to these children and their families today, but because it is an attempt to erase the Ukrainian language, identity, culture from the youth and the future of Ukraine.”

The UK separately announced sanctions against 56 individuals and organizations involved in Russia’s disinformation and influence operations.

EU officials hope more non-European countries will join the coalition to increase pressure on Russia and play a role in brokering returns.

The group meeting for discussions at the European Commission, officially known as the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children, is co-chaired by Ukraine and Canada and has 49 members, mostly from Europe.

Out of the spotlight, Türkiye, Qatar and other neutral states brokered nearly 100 returns. EU officials want to increase brokered returns because they are safer. For now, the vast majority of returns are undertaken by parents and other family members who take great personal risk to themselves and those helping them.

Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said it was difficult to get the children back: “You can exchange them for prisoners of war. But you can’t really exchange children for children because Ukraine has not deported any Russian children. So it’s much more difficult… We need to use all international support, including countries that are more interested in Russia.”

Conference attendees were expected to discuss reintegrating Ukrainian children into their families after the trauma of prolonged separation.

The installation is also expected to be exhibited in other public venues, including the Italian Parliament and the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

“It’s a really traumatic experience to be suddenly told to believe something that’s the exact opposite of what you know,” Galeeva said. “That’s why we brought this here so that policymakers can wake up their own fathers and mothers inside, their own children inside, and remember that this can’t wait.”