Thousands of missing Ukrainian children have been used as slaves in Vladimir Putin’s war factories, it has been claimed. Some as young as eight have toiled assembling drones and other hardware manufactured to kill innocents in the ongoing cross-border war.
The youngsters – snatched and seized as part of the raging conflict which erupted in 2022 and has killed and injured more than 1 million – were shipped to more than 200 camps where they are brainwashed.
The deeply disturbing picture emerged in a study by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) which has unearthed evidence of 210 Russian facilities used for state-sponsored kidnapping, deportation, re-education and forced adoption of Ukrainian children.
Eight different types of facilities are used as part of the Kremlin’s chilling programme of coerced adoption and fostering at the behest of tyrant Putin, the report claims.
The findings come as the despot, who has ruled Russia with an iron fist for more than 25 years, faces war crimes and crimes against humanity charges and an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court.
Thousands of Ukrainian children have been kidnapped and imprisoned at facilities deep inside Russia ranging from summer camps and sanatoriums to a military base, and, in one case, a monastery, according to research by the HRL.
In one case, researchers found children who had passed through the All-Russian Children’s Centre Change, in Russia’s southern Krasnodar Krai region, had been made to help construct drones, mine detectors, robots and rapid loaders for assault rifles.
It said: “More than 300 children from Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts were taken to this facility between 2022 and the present day.”
The camp hosts at least six different programmes for children from across Russia and occupied Ukraine.
A number of them are hosted by Yunarmiya, a militarised youth group funded by Russia’s ministry of defence.
The study comes as one person was killed and 13 others, including children, were injured in Russian strikes on Zaporizhzhia overnight.
Mariana Betsa, a Ukrainian deputy foreign minister, said: “There can no longer be any doubt – these innocent and vulnerable victims of Russia’s full-scale invasion have not just been taken from their families and home but forced into re-education and militarisation.
“The suffering of children is one of the most unbearable tragedies of this war. For the sake of global peace, Russia must return Ukrainian children home.”