Another war crime: Russia accused of 're-educating' Ukrainian children in camps

KYIV -- Russia is continuing to add to the list of war crimes it has committed during its invasion of Ukraine by holding at least 6,000 Ukrainian children in "re-education" camps, a US government funded study reported on February 14.

Since the start of the war nearly a year ago, children as young as four months have been taken to 43 camps across Russia, including in Siberia and Moscow-annexed Crimea, for "pro-Russia patriotic and military-related education", the Yale School of Medicine Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) said in a report that was funded by the US State Department.

Russia is in "clear violation" of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the treatment of civilians during war, said Nathaniel Raymond, a Yale researcher.

The Russian activity "in some cases may constitute a war crime and a crime against humanity", he told reporters Tuesday.

The report called for a neutral body to be granted access to the camps and for Russia immediately to stop adoptions of Ukrainian children.

"The total number of [detained] children is not known and is likely significantly higher than 6,000," the HRL said.

The Yale report relied on satellite imagery and public accounts.

More than 14,700 children have been deported to Russia, where some have been sexually exploited, Ukraine's government said recently.

Indoctrinating youth

Russian authorities have sought to provide a pro-Moscow viewpoint to children through school curricula as well as through field trips to patriotic sites and talks from veterans.

Children have also been given training in firearms, although Raymond said there was no evidence they were being sent back to fight.

Russia has cast the effort as saving orphans or helping children who need medical care. Some parents were pressured to give consent to send away their children, sometimes with hopes they would return, the report said.

The children were taken from the occupied territories under the pretext of "excursions" or "relaxation at youth camps", and parents had no choice, say rights activists.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's aides have been closely involved in the operation, especially Maria Lvova-Belova, the presidential commissioner for children's rights, said the study.

It quoted her as saying that 350 children have been adopted by Russian families and that more than 1,000 were awaiting adoption.

'Flagrantly illegal'

Ukrainians whose children were taken from them and rights observers confirmed the details of the study.

Irina Trefelyeva, a resident of Kherson, spent four months sleepless after being separated from her two daughters.

The city was occupied by Russian forces from March to November 2022.

As Ukrainian forces approached the city in October, occupation authorities spirited Trefelyeva's two daughters -- five-year-old Alexandra and 10-year-old Valeria -- to Crimea, allegedly "for safety reasons".

Only at the beginning of February was she able to recover her children.

"The Russians forced my daughters to sing the [Russian] anthem and to constantly stand near their flag. They were forbidden to speak Ukrainian and even to say anything about Ukraine," she said.

"My daughter hung balloons in her room once -- blue and yellow, like our flag. They threatened to call the FSB [Russian Federal Security Service] on her," Trefelyeva said.

So far, Ukraine has managed to return only 128 children of the thousands who were deported, said Myroslava Kharchenko, a lawyer with Save Ukraine, a charity helping to bring the children back from Russia.

"We have word that parents in the occupied territories are being intimidated. If you don't hand over your children, they strip you of your parental rights and take your children to an orphanage," she said.

"This is all flagrantly illegal behaviour."

"Children whose relatives or acquaintances died in the war against Russia are bullied," Kharchenko said.

"The children really aren't allowed to speak Ukrainian. They are called 'khokhly'," she added, referring to an anti-Ukrainian slur.

"It's essential to understand that they have been put in an artificial environment with no link to Ukraine," she said. "There is no link even to family."

"Many of those whom we've recovered said that for six months they were ... in a closed-off area. The children did not go out and did not communicate with other children," she said. "They were effectively cut off from the world."

'Forced displacement'

Russia has also simplified the path to citizenship for Ukrainian children, allowing their temporary guardians in Russia to apply thereby paving the way for illegal adoptions, according to Kharchenko.

"We keep getting confirmation that they are illegally adopting our children. Putin simultaneously simplified the procedure for acquiring citizenship and for adoption."

"When a Ukrainian child has Russian citizenship, his or her adoption is very simple and fast," she said.

"Even [Lvova-Belova], the presidential commissioner for children's rights in Russia, posted online that she adopted a boy from Donbas," Kharchenko said. "But it was a boy from Mariupol, whose parents died during the occupation."

During the summer, the Krasnodar City Department for Family and Childhood Affairs reported that "over 1,000 babies from liberated Mariupol have already found new families" in various regions of Russia, Novaya Gazeta Europe reported last August.

"More than 300 children are also in temporary custody at specialised institutions in the Krasnodar Region and are looking forward to meeting their new families," the guardianship authorities said on their website.

Relocating children and civilians from occupied territories is a gross violation of international laws, Kharchenko noted.

"There was no consent. And if there was no consent, then it is deportation -- forced displacement," she said.

Genocide and war crimes

Human rights activists are working to record all such instances that appear in the public domain.

"The Russians publish quite a lot of content about our Ukrainian children. They don't 'blur out' their faces, and so long as these videos are all available, they need to be documented," said Alyona Luneva, advocacy manager at the ZMINA Human Rights Centre in Kyiv.

"We need to look for these children, to look for their relatives," she said.

"Deportation of adults is a war crime. The deportation of children -- as their relocation from one ethnic group into another in order to destroy their identity -- can be considered genocide," said Luneva.

"The Russians' public position is that Ukrainian children should forget that they are Ukrainians, so there is clear intent. And that means their actions are deliberate."

"We will prove that the Russians are committing genocide," she said.