Russia launches the biggest air force attack in the war with Ukraine
The Russian attacks in Ukraine increase after the attack sets a new record for the largest single attack on Ukraine since the start of the war.
Scripps News
WASHINGTON – Russia is hugging tens of thousands of children who lured Ukrainian children in a vast “potentially unprecedented” network of over 200 militarization and “brainwashing” camps, according to a September 16 report from a group of war crime investigators.
“What we’re looking at is an industrialized network of reeducation, aka, Ukrainian children being brainwashed to turn Russians and, in some cases, certain Ukrainian children into soldiers,” said Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Public Health Humanitarian Research Lab, behind the report.
The forced relocation and re-education of children in Ukrainian Russia, and in some cases, their militarization, occur on a much larger scale than previously known, lab investigators found. They tracked the children to summer camps, sanatoriums, military bases in Russia and 210 sites that occupied Ukrainian territory.
The youngest Ukraine children, four months old, are held at facilities with names such as the Forest Fairy Camp and the Teddy Bear Camp, taught to promote the Ukrainian War, and are forced to learn Russian folk songs and fairy tales.
Over the age of eight, they have been forced into the “Cabinet School,” starting to receive Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) type programs, and as teenagers, they have been actively involved in military and combat training.
At all ages, children are forbidden to speak Ukrainians, he said.
Russia invites Ukrainian children on a historic scale
The exact number of Ukrainian children accused of Russia since the launch of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 is unknown. The Ukrainian government estimates it has nearly 20,000 children, but past reports from Yale Lab have brought it to more than 35,000.
Raymond said that Russia’s massive operations are historically comparable only between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Stalin regime. Many Ukrainian children are detained in the same place where people from the Baltic countries were accused of during the Soviet-era “Operational Dal Waves” in 1949, and in at least one case, in the exact same facility.
Military training was observed at around 40 locations, with the programme including combat training and drone assembly.
Researchers still don’t have evidence on hand that Ukrainian children are forced to fight for Russia in the war, but Raymond said the lab made an important breakthrough in that direction when he identified a trench carved in the form of a “Z” in a militarization camp for one child. “Z-trench” is increasingly being used on both sides of the conflict to protect blasts from FPVs, or first-person view drones, Raymond said.
“Can you make sure there is an industrial-scale training pipeline to prepare for combat operations? Yes, you can,” Raymond said.
The lab discovered that half of the locations they identified were managed by the Russian government. The other half is run by unknown or private operators, but the report says “there is probably a high number of true facilities in government-affiliated facilities.”
Some children were detained in camp and returned home, while others were kept indefinitely, the report says, and were placed with Russian families who officially adopted them.
The lab sifted publicly available data and commercially available satellite images to track the facility.
According to Raymond, the “breakthrough” in the investigation is a selfie posted online by local Russian authorities, who accused Ukrainian children of their own. Researchers extracted location data from the photographs and tracked the child through satellites and reconnaissance.
Ukrainian officials said the report provides unrefutable evidence that Russia is systematically deporting children, illegally recruiting, reeducating them and militarizing them.
“It is clear that Russia is currently planning to use Ukraine’s own children more widely as a ‘weapon’ for us and Europe,” Andri Yermack, head of the Ukrainian presidential office, said in a statement.
Yale researchers said they shared data with the UN Security Council, which Russia places. The lab shares historical data with the International Criminal Court, which issued a warrant in 2023 for President Putin and Russian official Maria Alexeyevna Lvova Belova, who is in charge of child rights.
Russia has denied that it commits a war crime. Without directly mentioning Ukraine, First Lady Melania Trump filed a light letter of children in a complaint to Putin in a letter her husband delivered to Russian leaders in August during an Alaska summit. Ukraine said the return of children must be part of any contract to end the war.
Yale Lab worked on a cutoff to Trump’s fundraising
The research group received funding through the US State Department program until the Trump administration closed it earlier this year.
After an infuriated lawmaker warned that satellite images and biometric data used to track stolen children could be lost as a result, the Department of State temporarily allowed them to recover funds and transfer information. Ukrainian authorities want to use archived data to bring children home and prosecute Russian officials who are responsible for illegal adoption.
Raymond said the lab had a difficult fight to continue its investigation after funding SPIGOT was stopped. After that, rescue came in the form of a “Ukrainian-American grandmother.”
“I have these incredible messages of $5, $10, and $25 donations, “I don’t have much. I’m on the bond, but you’re looking for kids, so just keep going,” Raymond said.
