Ukrainian Children in Italian Care Resist Return, and the Plain Weighs Its Welcome

The Guardian has reported on the thousands of Ukrainian children who were evacuated from state care when Russia invaded in 2022 and placed in institutions and families abroad, and who now say they do not want to return home even as Kyiv presses for their repatriation.

The newspaper's account opens with a fifteen-year-old, identified only as Denys, who arrived in a small village in the Italian Alps in March 2022 after an overnight bus journey and describes feeling homesick and confused at first. His position now, according to the report, is that his future lies in the European Union.

The story is a reminder that the reception of Ukrainian minors was never only an emergency measure. It created legal and human ties that outlast the circumstances that produced them, and the question of what happens when the receiving country and the country of origin disagree about a child's best interest has no easy answer in either Italian or EU law.