President Volodymyr Zelenskyy joins senior Canadian, Ukrainian and international representatives at the Leaders’ Summit of the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children in New York on Sept. 23, 2025, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. Photo: Office of the President of Ukraine.
At UN, Carney and Zelenskyy Turn From Direct Appeals to Tracing, Sanctions and a Global Vote
By Saqib S. Qureshi | SCN NEWS
NEW YORK, Sept. 23, 2025 (SCN NEWS) — Canada and Ukraine are changing the way they are trying to bring Ukrainian children home, moving beyond repeated demands for Russian cooperation toward a strategy built around international tracing, targeted pressure and a planned United Nations vote. Prime Minister Mark Carney and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy brought more than 50 delegations together on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, months after Ukraine handed Russian negotiators an initial list of 339 children in Istanbul without, according to Canada and Ukraine, receiving a meaningful response. The New York meeting suggests Ottawa and Kyiv are no longer treating that list simply as an unanswered humanitarian request; they are using its failure to build a wider case for international action.
The numbers help explain the shift. Canada and Ukraine said around 1,600 children had been successfully returned by the time of the UN meeting, but thousands were believed to remain in Russia or Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory. Ukraine's government separately put the returned figure at 1,625, while continuing to accuse Moscow of unlawful deportations and forcible transfers; Russia has disputed accusations that it systematically abducted Ukrainian children and has characterized many wartime transfers as evacuations from combat zones. The diplomatic problem for Ottawa and Kyiv is therefore no longer convincing allies that children should return — they have spent more than a year building that consensus — but finding children, verifying individual cases and creating enough leverage or mediation to produce returns without relying solely on Moscow voluntarily supplying information.
The most consequential development in New York may therefore be less visible than the speeches. Coalition members announced a pilot tracing mechanism intended to gather information on children deported or forcibly transferred to Russia and occupied territories, an attempt to attack one of the biggest weaknesses exposed by the Istanbul process: Ukraine can submit names it already knows, but it cannot negotiate effectively over children whose location, identity or legal status cannot be independently established. The meeting also produced commitments for tracing, psychosocial assistance, rehabilitation and foster-care support, while Austria reconfirmed mediation efforts and Italy indicated readiness to work with the Vatican on returns.
At the same time, Canada and Ukraine are adding political pressure to the tracing effort. Carney urged partners to intensify sanctions against those connected to the removal of Ukrainian children, while Zelenskyy called for people involved in transfers and efforts to alter children's identities to be included in sanctions packages. Kyiv also announced plans to take the issue to the full UN General Assembly through a resolution demanding the return of Ukrainian children, shifting part of the fight from a coalition largely made up of supportive governments to a chamber where countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East would have to publicly decide where they stand.
That is a significant evolution from the strategy Canada began helping construct in 2024. Ottawa and Kyiv initially concentrated on assembling an international coalition, then used the Montréal process to recruit intermediary states and Canada's G7 presidency to frame humanitarian returns as a potential confidence-building measure in peace negotiations. Istanbul provided the first unusually clear test when Ukraine put 339 individual cases directly before Russian negotiators. By August, Canada and coalition members were publicly saying there had been no meaningful response; New York now shows what comes after that failure — broaden the countries involved, improve independent tracing, increase costs on individuals accused of participating in the transfers and seek political authority from the United Nations.
There is still a major limitation. A UN resolution cannot physically return a child, sanctions cannot establish the location of a missing person, and a tracing mechanism ultimately needs reliable information to connect a child with a family and a route home. Quiet mediation may consequently remain as important as public pressure, particularly through governments and institutions capable of maintaining channels with Moscow. The coalition itself acknowledged both approaches in New York, calling for international advocacy while also recognizing the role of quiet diplomacy and states prepared to mediate individual returns.
For Canada, however, the New York meeting marked a transition from coalition-building to something harder to measure and harder to deliver. Ottawa has helped move the issue from Montréal to the G7 and now to the margins of the United Nations General Assembly, while the European Union and Andorra formally joined the coalition in New York. The diplomatic network is getting larger, but the unanswered 339-name list remains a warning against measuring success by the number of governments in the room. Canada and Ukraine's next strategy is built around finding more children and applying more pressure; its success will ultimately be counted in a much simpler number — how many actually come home.