Russia’s secretive program of re-education and military and police training for Ukrainian children from occupied territories is far larger than estimated earlier, war crime investigators at Yale University said in a study released on Tuesday.
Russian policies toward Ukrainian war orphans and children separated from their parents in areas controlled by the Russian Army have outraged Ukrainians and prompted investigations of war crimes. One such case led the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for President Vladimir V. Putin and a top Russian aide on children’s issues.
Investigators have examined instances in which Ukrainian parents were killed by the Russian Army in its invasion and their children were subsequently educated in Russian language and culture. In other cases, Ukrainian children were put up for adoption or placed in foster care with Russian families.
Children from Ukraine have been put in schools and cadet academies with military training oriented toward the fight against their own homeland, the Yale study found. Russian law enforcement agencies have also run programs to care for Ukrainian children, it found.
The study, by the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, documented at least 210 sites in Russia and in occupied areas that hold Ukrainian children. Among them are military cadet schools; camps with a Russian nationalist orientation, such as a network called Warrior; and Russian Orthodox monasteries, schools, summer camps, orphanages and hospitals.
That was twice the number of sites that investigators expected to find, Nathaniel Raymond, the lab’s executive director, said in an interview. He called the Russian program the largest single kidnapping since World War II, when Nazi Germany moved children from occupied Poland to Germany for education in German.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The post Russia Indoctrinates Children From Occupied Ukraine at 210 Sites, Study Says appeared first on New York Times.
