Except translation, this story has not been edited by achinews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.
Russia is stepping up its forced deportation of Ukrainian children this summer with specific goals to re-educate and militarize them for Moscow’s fighting forces, researchers and advocates say.
Authorities in Russia and occupied territories in eastern Ukraine are sending thousands of young people to so-called “summer camps” that promote Russian language, culture and propaganda, the researchers said. Under a program the Kremlin has called “Useful Holidays,” children are also being sent to “visit” Russia for “patriotic” and “educational activities,” according to public Telegram posts by regional governments in the Donbas that aligned with Russia.
Indeed, according to researchers, these are fronts for kidnapped children and orphans to be indoctrinated, with the ultimate goal of giving them Russian citizenship and erasing their Ukrainian identity.
“These children become sources of mobilization for Russian officials in the occupied territories,” said Vladyslav Havrylov, a research fellow at Georgetown University and one of the principal researchers of the Where Are Our People project that reveals the locations of deported Ukrainians is mandatory.
“In some cases, they make children sign letters (forged by Russian and Russian-aligned officials) that say they don’t want to be citizens of Ukraine, they want to be citizens Russian. This is criminal practice.”
The illegal deportation and re-education of Ukrainian children has become a major international concern as Russia’s full-scale invasion continues after more than two years.
At the Ukraine Peace Summit in Switzerland last weekend, where efforts to secure the return of those children were discussed at a meeting led by Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the deportation and erasure of Ukrainian identity “an element of genocide.”
“That’s pure colonialism,” he told reporters Sunday morning after the meeting. “These are things that Russia needs to be accountable for.”
Ukrainian officials and international partners say they have identified about 20,000 children who have been deported to Russia since the beginning of 2022. Of those, fewer than 400 have been successfully returned to their families in Ukraine.
But human rights organizations point out that the practice dates back – even before Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 – and has only accelerated since the full-scale war began, with hundreds of thousands of young people stolen and reprogrammed over the past two decades.
“It’s an ongoing crime,” said Oleksandra Romantsova, executive director of the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine.
“They try to indoctrinate this idea of a strong Putin, a strong state (Russia), all this, from the beginning of childhood – as early as kindergarten.”
A series of laws signed by Putin in the run-up to the war and in the months following his invasion have made it easier for Russian authorities to grant citizenship to Ukrainian children, particularly orphans or those who have been separated from their families.
Putin has also overseen the expansion of youth paramilitary organizations. He himself leads the state-backed Mudiad y Cinfta, a youth movement created in 2022 that is seen as the modern successor to the Young Pioneers of the Soviet era. The organization educates – and in the case of Ukrainian children, re-educates – members in Russian patriotism and militarism, and against the idea of Ukraine as an independent state and culture.
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Although it is not compulsory to join the First Movement, the chairman of its board has said that the “ideal situation” is that all Russian children are members within five years.
Researchers and advocates say the organization is one of several organizations responsible for the programs being promoted as “summer camps.”
In late May, Leonid Pasechnik, the Moscow-appointed head of the Luhansk People’s Republic, announced on Telegram that Russian “fraternal regions” will host 12,000 children from Luhansk for “summer recreation and health improvement” in the coming months.
He added that up to 40,000 children from occupied Ukrainian oblasts will also be sent on state-sponsored trips to Moscow, Rostov-on-don and other Russian cities and facilities for “educational” and “patriotic” courses ”, under “Useful” Russian government. holiday programme”.
Pasechnik noted that the number was “almost twice as much as last year.”
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, and researchers like Havrylov say these so-called “educational opportunities” are just forms for re-education programs.
The ISW pointed to other officials from Russian occupied territories deceiving hundreds of children being sent to camps and education facilities throughout Russia.
“Russian authorities are likely to increase deportation efforts throughout the summer under the guise of summer vacations, but these programs represent genocidal acts against the Ukrainian people despite Russia’s attempts to cloak them as educational opportunities for turn and positive,” said the ISW in its assessment May 28. the war in Ukraine.
Moscow has also claimed that it only sought to protect vulnerable children from the war zone. The Russian government has not addressed specific allegations of forced deportation or re-education in recent weeks, and did not respond to requests for comment.
Havrylov and his research team have been slowly tracking the locations of these camps and other temporary accommodation, and say they have found evidence of even more facilities this year, some of them new and scattered across the vast Russian mainland.
“We have found more locations especially in the Far East, near Asian countries, close to Japan,” he said.
Havrylov said he wanted Japan and other Indo-Pacific countries that have joined NATO allies in condemning Russia’s invasion to help secure the release of Ukrainian children taken to eastern Russia, and even host them temporarily until they can be reunited. .
Romantsova noted that the Russian area is eight time zones away from Ukraine – making it impossible to ensure that children return to their homes without help from neighboring nations.
He said the Civil Liberties Center has worked for years with Russian human rights activists and opposition politicians on the ground trying to find Ukrainian children and arrange their return. Those activists must work anonymously and covertly to avoid Moscow’s strict laws against protest or anti-government speech, and some have been forced into exile in neighboring European countries, Romantsova said.
“It’s extremely dangerous for them,” he said.
The White House said last week it was aware of the growing reports about the deportations, pointing to a “credible” investigation by the Financial Times which found evidence that abducted Ukrainian children had been given to be adopted in Russia.
“This is despicable and disgraceful,” Jake Sullivan, US President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, said in a statement. “These Ukrainian children belong with their families inside Ukraine. Russia is at war not only against the Ukrainian military – but against the Ukrainian people. “
Last week, before the G7 Summit and the Ukraine peace summit, the United States announced sweeping Russian sanctions that included individuals and entities accused of participating in the deportation of children. The list of targets included the First Movement and a number of officials in the regional governments of Luhansk and Crimea.
Canada has been leading an international coalition to secure the return of Ukrainian children taken by Russia, and Trudeau announced on Sunday that he will contribute $15 million to support vulnerable children and reintegrate youth who are returned to their families.
Trudeau said the international community must work to see the return of Ukrainian children and ensure that Putin and those involved are “held accountable for these crimes against humanity.”
Putin and his children’s rights commissioner Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova face warrants for their arrest from the International Criminal Court for war crimes over the deportation of children. Russia denied the guarantees were “outrageous and unacceptable,” and Lvova-Belova dismissed the charges as false.
(Except translation, this story has not been edited by achinews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
source link https://globalnews.ca/news/10565709/ukraine-children-deportations-russia-summer/
