Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was one of the most iconic movies of the 1980s. In the film, Indiana Jones stumbles upon a village in India where children have been stolen and forced into slave labor by a ruthless cult.
Alongside his two companions, Jones embarks on a perilous mission to rescue the children, navigating deadly traps and powerful enemies. At its core, the story is more than just a thrilling adventure — it is about the moral duty to rescue the innocent from oppression and return them to their families.
Today, Ukraine faces a crisis that is tragically real. Russia has forcibly taken at least 20,000 Ukrainian children. According to Ukrainian officials, the true number could be even higher, as information from Russian-occupied territories remains incomplete.
While any peace deal will require painful compromises for Ukraine, there is one issue that must never be negotiable: Its stolen children must be returned.
This war is not only about geopolitics — it is deeply personal. My grandfather, Yakov Zapesochny, and his siblings lived in Ukraine during the Holodomor of 1932–33, the man-made famine that devastated the Soviet Union under Stalin.
In Ukraine alone, an estimated 7 million people died. About 3.5 million perished directly from starvation, and another 3.5 million succumbed to diseases like tuberculosis and dysentery, which their bodies could no longer resist after months of hunger.
In Kazakhstan, where nomadic populations were forcibly settled and stripped of their livestock, approximately 1.5 million people perished — about one-quarter of the Kazakh population. It has been estimated that Russia lost almost as many people as Kazakhstan at the time.
Some victims were also executed and deported by the government as enemies of the regime. These broader estimates reflect the full human cost of Stalin’s famine policy, not just from starvation itself, but from the systemic collapse of health, dignity, and life in the Soviet Union.
This was not a natural disaster. Stalin deliberately starved millions, seizing grain from peasants and exporting it abroad to finance his industrialization drive. In 1932, the Soviet Union exported 4.27 million tons of Ukrainian grain, which was enough to feed 12 million people for a year.
In his memoir, my grandfather wrote, “Я всегда был голодным” — "I was always hungry.” That constant hunger was not an exception — it was the daily reality of life during Holodomor.
Holodomor is one of the reasons why Ukrainians do not want to return to Moscow’s orbit.
In 1936, my grandfather was arrested in his apartment on Saksagansky Street in Kyiv. He was sent to the Gulag in Vorkuta and did not see his first wife and eldest son for 10 years.
He was arrested by the NKVD, the predecessor to the KGB.
Of my grandfather’s five siblings, only he and his older brother escaped the Soviet Union.
His brother, Misha, left for Argentina, while my grandfather made it to Israel with my grandmother.
On my mother’s side, one of my relatives was in Odessa when the city was bombed in 2022. Others are now asylum seekers — forced to build new lives away from their homeland.
Innocent Ukrainian lives are being torn apart. Regardless of where one stands on the war, the forced displacement of children is an undeniable crime against humanity.
The international community must insist on a systematic effort to locate and reunite these children with their families. If that means combing through every orphanage and administrative record in Russia, so be it.
Any final peace agreement must include a clear and enforceable process for returning Ukraine’s children, with international oversight and accountability. This demand is non-negotiable and fundamental.
Ukraine’s history is one of courage and defiance. From the Cossack warrior in Nikolai Gogol’s Taras Bulba, who sacrifices everything for his homeland, to the poetry of Taras Shevchenko, whose dying wish was to be buried in Ukraine — the spirit of this nation is indomitable.
Even in the face of overwhelming odds, the Ukrainians are fighting for their identity, their land, and their children.
The international community cannot turn a blind eye to this crisis. There must be unwavering pressure to ensure these children are found and returned to their families.
In his book, Why We Can’t Wait, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., described Bull Connor’s Birmingham in 1963. He believed that the biggest obstacle to justice was not the overt racists, but the white moderates who stood by and did nothing.
The same is true today. The greatest threat to Ukraine’s stolen children isn’t just Vladimir Putin — it is the world’s indifference.
If we accept inaction, we are no better than the bystanders in history who allowed injustices to fester. This is not only about Ukraine’s future — it is about our own humanity.
Robert Zapesochny is a researcher and writer whose work focuses on foreign affairs, national security and presidential history. He has been published in numerous outlets, including The American Spectator, the Washington Times, and The American Conservative. When he's not writing, Robert works for a medical research company in New York. Read Robert Zapesochny's Reports — More Here.
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