The Ukrainian Children in Italy's Alps Who Do Not Want to Go Home

When he arrived in a small village in the Italian Alps in March 2022, a 15-year-old evacuee identified only as Denys told the Guardian he felt homesick and confused, having been put on an overnight bus and relocated away from his family. Four years later, his position has reversed: he is among the Ukrainian children in state care who say their future lies in the European Union, not in Ukraine. Kyiv wants them back. Many are resisting.

The Guardian's global-development reporting describes thousands of children who were in Ukrainian state care when Russia invaded and were evacuated westward, including into Italy. The Italian placements were arranged in the first weeks of the war, when the reception of unaccompanied and institutionalised minors was treated as an emergency rather than a long-term arrangement. That emergency has now become a legal and diplomatic argument over where these young people belong.

The dispute is not confined to Italy. The Guardian frames it as a wider European question, with host countries holding children whom the Ukrainian state regards as its own responsibility, and with the children themselves now old enough to be heard on the matter. The paper records Denys's own words — that his future is in the EU — as the clearest statement of a position that no repatriation procedure has yet resolved.