FRIULI-VENEZIA GIULIA
Ukrainian Children in Italian Care Weigh a Future in the EU
A Guardian investigation follows evacuees placed in Alpine villages who resist Kyiv's call to return, raising questions for Italy's eastern border regions
Sergio Madrussan640 wordsEdition №121Sunday, 20 September 2026 — Edition № 121
When Russia's full-scale invasion began in 2022, thousands of Ukrainian children in state care were evacuated westward, and a share of them were placed in Italy, including in small villages in the Italian Alps. The Guardian reported this week that many of those children now resist returning to Ukraine, even as Kyiv presses for their repatriation. The paper followed the case of Denys, a 15-year-old who arrived in an Alpine village in March 2022 after an overnight bus journey and, by his own account, felt homesick and confused at first.
The story is a human one, but it also describes an administrative problem that European states have not resolved: who has authority over a minor evacuated from a war zone, and what 'the child's best interest' means when the child has now spent more than four years in a European school and speaks a European language. According to the Guardian, Kyiv wants the children back; many of them do not want to go.