Russia has kidnapped and radicalised thousands of Ukrainian children, even ‘reeducating’ them to produce military equipment to later be used against their country, a study claims.
Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab contends that Vladimir Putin’s military is using more than 210 facilities across both Russia and Russian-occupied Ukraine to do so.
“In many cases, (they) are placed in programs of forced militarisation that include, though are not limited to, combat and paratrooper training,” the study states.
The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Putin in 2023, a year after launching his invasion of Ukraine, for his role in overseeing the mass kidnapping of Ukrainian children, accusing him of committing “the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”
Other incidents of Russia’s involvement in kidnapping natives from Ukraine include a twisted online adoption catalogue listing hundreds of kids trafficked by the Kremlin, uncovered by the Save Ukraine organisation.
“Children at some facilities have been engaged in the production of military equipment for Russia’s armed forces, including drones,” the Yale study added.
Analysts collated data from “publicly available data sources and commercially available satellite imagery,” before verifying and applying an intelligence assessment framework used by NATO.
The study does not estimate how many children have been abducted since February 2022, though previous disclosures made by U.S. intelligence and Kyiv officials say as many as 35,000 children are missing and thought to be held in Russia.
Researchers add that, despite some being returned, including 101 in August, “other groups of children have been held indefinitely,” noting that, “in some cases, children who have entered this network of camps, so-called family centres, and other facilities have entered Russia’s program of coerced fostering and adoption, eventually being placed with families in Russia and becoming naturalised citizens of the Russian Federation.”
The hundreds of facilities utilised to house these children are reportedly split into eight categories, including summer camps, mental institutions, at least one military base and a monastery. Here, pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian ideologies are promoted by officials.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has tried to crack down on the mass kidnappings, founding the state-run ‘Bring Kids Back’ movement, which believes more than 19,500 Ukrainian children have been abducted since Russia’s invasion began, and only a fraction of this number have been returned.
Last week, Zelensky pledged to raise the matter at the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York, which kicks off on Sunday (September 21).
The wartime leader, alongside Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, will host the event and hopes “many leaders will join us.”
During an unprecedented second state visit to the UK, President Donald Trump told reporters he felt “let down” by his Russian counterpart, Putin, after inviting the leader to Alaska for talks in the hope of securing a peace deal for Ukraine.
Since, Russia has continued to ramp up its drone and missile strikes across Ukraine and has antagonised its NATO foes by flying drones and fighter jets into Polish airspace and sending three MiG-31s into Estonian skies.
