"I realized that I couldn't bear loneliness and that somewhere, there was a small child who was also alone and needed a mother, a home and everything a family can offer. I can give love, and I want to take care of someone," said Olha from Sumy in northeastern Ukraine.

She lost her 27-year-old son Maksym at the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 when he was defending the port city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov.

"I know what it means to be alone," Olha told DW. "If I had a big family, I would have support."

After her son's funeral, Olha decided to adopt a girl, as a boy could have reminded her of her late son. She submitted all the necessary documents to the authorities and received permission to adopt a girl. She then completed a state-run training course and has now been waiting a year for the girl to finally join her family.

"There are many children in orphanages, but not all of them can be adopted. It's not easy when you're already set on having a child, looking around for books and dolls, and having to wait. But you don't yet know what the girl will be like."

Patience needed

In the first year of the war in Ukraine, the adoption rates in the country fell, said Vasyl Luzyk, who heads the National Social Service. While Ukrainians adopted just 752 children in 2022, rates climbed to 925 in 2023 and almost 600 in the first half of 2024.

One of those adopted children is 3-year-old Bohdan. He has been living for two weeks with Tatjana and her husband, who live in Lviv in western Ukraine and have two biological children, a 14-year-old son and a 12-year-old daughter.

"We always wanted to be one big family," Tatyana told DW. "I think that's how all adoption stories start."

Adopting Bohdan took nine months. Like Olha, Tatjana could hardly wait for the authorities to find a child for her to take in. She began searching herself, scouring a nationwide database of orphans and social networks. That's when she came across a message about Bohdan, who had been evacuated from an orphanage in the Kharkiv area to the Ivano-Frankivsk region.

She recalled that the boy opened up to her at the very first meeting. "He is playful, open and cheerful." The family visited Bohdan for several months, and finally, the couple received permission from the court to adopt him.

Russia's war against Ukraine complicates adoptions

When Russia launched its invasion in 2022, Ukraine banned foreigners from adopting Ukrainian children. Yet even for Ukrainians, adoptions proved difficult as the war made it harder for courts and state agencies to do their work. However, these problems were solved a few months later, said Daria Kasyanova of SOS Children's Villages Ukraine, an NGO that looks after orphans.

Because of the war, entire orphanages were relocated to safer regions of Ukraine. Some children were taken abroad where they could not be adopted by Ukrainians. This changed, however, in June 2024.

"Foster parents asked for matters to be simplified," Kasyanova told DW. Her organization provides financial support to families who want to adopt an orphaned child evacuated abroad. To do this, families must get to know the child online and then visit them abroad. "Almost 60 families have already contacted us, for whom we have paid for trips to various countries, including Poland, Germany, Turkey, Austria and Switzerland," said Kasyanova.

But not all countries want to see Ukrainian orphans go back to their home country and sometimes intentionally complicate their return. "Even when countries are willing to return children, international human rights organizations intervene and question whether these children will live in safety," Kasyanova said.

Ukrainian orphans sent abroad

Viktoria is one of those Ukrainians waiting for permission to take in an orphan living abroad. She moved from Zaporizhzhia to western Ukraine with her husband and 4-year-old daughter. The couple wanted to adopt a child even before the war broke out and submitted all the necessary documents in 2023. They have been registered as prospective foster parents since early 2024.

While searching the orphan database, Viktoria found a 5-year-old girl who had been evacuated from Odesa to Lithuania. The girl came from a dysfunctional family, and her parents had their custody of the child removed. The girl had a 10-year-old sister who had been placed in a home even earlier and was evacuated to Poland. When siblings are adopted, they may not be separated.

After initially speaking to the girls online, Viktoria visited them in Poland and Lithuania. "The older one really wants a family because she knows what that means. She came to a home when she was older, while the younger one was still very small. She didn't even know she had an older sister," Viktoria said.

To be able to return the girls to Ukraine and adopt them, Viktoria was initially appointed as their guardian. Ukrainian authorities must now organize the girls' return with the help of the respective consulates.

"The longer this war lasts, the older the girls become and the less likely it is that they will be reunited with a family," said Viktoria.

"The children should be placed in Ukrainian families," Natalia Ibrahimova of the Kiyv Regional Center for Social Services, which offers training sessions for foster parents, told DW. "Parents will decide for themselves how to protect their child during the war, but the child will know that they have caring parents and rather than educators."

A pretext to avoid military service?

Adopting orphans who often have disabilities, may have experienced psychological trauma and may deal with developmental issues requires great responsibility, said Ibrahimova. She knows cases where parents have returned foster children because they were overwhelmed by such cases.

There could be more instances of foster parents returning adopted children after the war, fears Ibrahimova. She has observed that some men use adoptions to increase the number of their children to three, as this entitles them to avoid military conscription or leave the army. "Out of 100 applicants, only 40% really want to have children," said Ibrahimova.

Tatjana, who adopted 3-year-old Bohdan with her husband, had to dispel such suspicions. The judge demanded proof that the family, which already had two children, did not want to take in the boy just so that Tatjana's husband could leave the military, where he has served since the beginning of the Russian invasion.

"I said that my husband had already completed his military service in 2015 and volunteered in February 2022. As a healthy woman, I could have given birth to a third child to get my husband out of the army," said Tatjana. She finds it unpleasant to be forced to dispel such suspicions but can imagine that they are sometimes justified by other people.

Tatjana's husband took a vacation to get to know Bohdan at the care home. Tatjana recalls that the boy immediately bonded with him and called him dad. Now that Bohdan is getting used to his new home, Tatjana's husband is trying to get discharged from the military. After all, said Tatjana, he wants to be with his family and has every right to be.

This article was originally written in Ukrainian.