Russia brainwashing Ukrainian children in 200+ camps, organising grenade-throwing competitions: Report
Russia has been taking Ukrainian children to camps where they are being taught military skills to fight for Moscow, a Yale School of Public Health study has claimed.
Amid the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the former is re-educating, Russifying, and militarising Ukrainian children across 210 camps, a recently published report has claimed.
The report, titled Ukraine's Stolen Children: Inside Russia's Network of Re-Education and Militarization, published by the Yale School of Public Health's Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL), claims that more than half of these aforementioned facilities are being used to re-educate children while around 18% of these are being used to teach them military skills. Among these camps, more than half are managed by the Russian government itself.
The report has also made a list of the different types of locations Ukrainian children have been taken to: “cadet schools, a military base, medical facilities, a religious site, secondary schools and universities, a hotel, family support centers and orphanages, and most frequently, camps and sanatoriums.”
It goes on to claim that in 39 of these facilities, children as young as eight are trained on weapons, made to take part in grenade-throwing competitions, and taught tactical medicine courses.
Speak to The Guardian, director of HRL Nathaniel Raymond said, “What we have here is an unprecedented network of facilities, expressly built and expanded since 2014, to turn Ukrainian children into Russians,” further adding, It is a pipeline for Ukraine’s children to be re-educated – brainwashed – and turned into soldiers.”
How the evidence was gathered
Researchers mainly based their hypothesis on open-source evidence, sometimes from Russian publications, along with high-resolution satellite images, following which they corroborated the evidence with five independent sources.
“We can see trench works, firing ranges, parade grounds. The only thing we don’t know is whether [Ukrainian children have] already been deployed in battle,” Raymond told the publication.
2023 probe by International Criminal Court
In 2023, after a probe, the International Criminal Court indicted both Russian President Vladimir Putin and children's commissioner Maria Rvova-Belova for the mass abduction of children from Ukraine. Following the indictment, an international arrest warrant was issued against Putin.
Melania Trump's letter
In August, US First Lady Melania Trump wrote an open letter to the Russian president in which she focussed on the plight of the battle-ravaged Ukrainian children. She went on to urge him to "protect their innocence." The letter was hand-delivered by US President Trump to Putin when they met in Alaska.
In the letter, although she didn't accuse Russia directly of abducting Ukrainian children, she said,"As leaders, the responsibility to sustain our children extends beyond the comfort of a few. Undeniably, we must strive to paint a dignity-filled world for all - so that every soul may wake to peace, and so that the future itself is perfectly guarded."
"... in today's world, some children are forced to carry a quiet laughter, untouched by the darkness around them a silent defiance against the forces that can potentially claim their future. Mr. Putin, you can singlehandedly restore their melodic laughter," she urged Putin.