More than 6,000 stolen Ukrainian children, between four months and 17 years old, coming from areas like Donetsk and Luganskhave been sent by Russia to reeducation camps to receive a military education, in addition to Russian academic education and cultural patriotism, with the aim of denying and suppressing Ukrainian identity, history and culture and cutting off communication between children and family members.
In addition, hundreds of Ukrainian minors have been placed in the adoption system and in Russian orphanageswhich could constitute a “war crime”according to a report published by the Llaboratory Research Center at Yale University funded by the US Department of State. The Government of Ukraine figures in 14,700 children who have been deported to Russia since the start of the invasion on February 24.
The investigation reveals that Moscow is holding thousands of Ukrainian minors, whose parents are alive in the vast majority of cases and still reside in Ukraine, in 43 centers, of which 41 were used in the past as children’s summer camps.
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These centers are spread throughout the Russian territory, as well as in areas of Crimea, Siberia and even there is such a facility in magadanon the Russian Pacific coast, closer to the US mainland than to Moscow.
Guns and cultural patriotism
In 78% of these facilities, methods of re-education of Ukrainian minors are carried out. The research provides photographs and videos of minors that do not show children sitting in classrooms but handling firearms, doing training exercises such as jumping obstacles or driving vehicles. The report claims that “The devastating effects of Putin’s war on the children of Ukraine will be felt for generations.”
Of those 43 centers that have been located, 32 are carrying out “systematic re-education efforts” to “expose” Ukrainian minors to a military education, in addition to a Russian academic education and cultural patriotism, through school studies, excursions to places with great ideological charge and talks by veterans.
The objective of this lack of contact with the families would be to prevent the return of the minors and to re-educate them in Russian culture with the aim of giving them up for adoption to families in Russia.
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two groups of minors
He expert Nathaniel Raymondexecutive director of that American laboratory, has assured that they have “evidence” that Russia has violated the Geneva Convention and “other elements” of international law on the rights of minors and their protection in armed conflict.
Raymond explained that two groups of minors: on the one hand, there are those from Donetsk and Lugansk, They make up the bulk of the 6,000 children, whose number has been estimated based on reports of transfers to re-education camps.
The second belongs to what Russia calls “evacuees” from Kherson, Kharkiv and Zaporizhia, who are being placed in the Russian adoption system.
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“They will be returned only if their parents come”
Regarding the explanation that Russia is giving the children why they remain on Russian territory and do not return to Ukraine with their parents, the report reveals that an official from a Medvezhonok has confessed that the returns are conditioned or justified with explanations that many of the minors do not understand due to their age.
“The children will be returned only if Russia regains the city of Izium, For example. Another child was told that he would return to his house because he had pro-Ukrainian and not Russian views,” the source said.
In the case of parents whose children have been stolen, they have even been told that they would only be released if they physically went to pick them up. It must be remembered that traveling from Ukraine to Russia is very expensive and practically impossible, since men between the ages of 18 and 60 are prohibited from leaving the country, which means that only the mothers of the children can retrieve them.
“A significant portion of these families are low-income and have not been able to afford the trip. Some families were forced to sell your belongings and travel through four countries to reunite with his son,” says the report from the Yale University Research Laboratory.
According to Raymond, with these acts Russia is adopting a comprehensive approach at the government level to resettle and carry out forced adoptions of Ukrainian minors who they are not at all orphans and that they have their family in Ukraine.
“This is exactly consistent with what some of the early Nazi trials before the Nuremberg tribunal. There is no doubt that there is no confusion in international law: Russia’s actions are illegal and may constitute a war crime and crime against humanity.”
