Unpublished testimonies from Ukrainian children

Ukrainian children were mostly taken to pre-existing organisations which didn’t only hold kidnapped children.
This is especially the case for schools. Yet Russia also constructed or expanded certain facilities to accommodate “larger cohorts of children”. This is the case of 23 percent of the facilities analysed, according to the researchers at HRL. They noted that in the Russian-controlled part of the Donbas, two schools for military cadets were built and later enlarged beginning in 2021, most likely to hold “more displaced children”.

Russia’s government directly manages 55 percent of the sites where re-education activities occurred. Private companies were also involved in the vast programme, like the petrol giant Bashneft, which manages a camp for children, and KamAZ, a major constructor of Russian trucks, which operates a large “leisure” camp for children in the Republic of Tatarstan.

Children who end up in these facilities are most often subjected to "re-education" activities. In at least 130 sites identified in the study, children were indoctrinated with Russian propaganda that emphasised patriotic values.

Ukraine-Russia talks overshadowed by child deportations and renewed strikes
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This indoctrination can go to extreme lengths, as illustrated by another report published by the British NGO War Child UK. The organisation gathered first-hand accounts from 200 Ukrainian children who have returned from Russia since 2022. Their statements paint a picture of "a systematic [Russian] program that risks creating a generation of [Ukrainian] children deprived of their identity", wrote the report.

What emerges from their accounts is “a clear pattern of indoctrination”, said Helen Pattinson, CEO of War Child UK. "The children are ripped from their homes, have their passport taken away, and are told they can’t speak their language. They are given new names and new identification documents. They are asked to sing the Russian national anthem and to recite Russian poetry. Everything is done in Russian, and they are required to wear Russian clothing. They may even be adopted into a Russian family," said Pattinson.

This indoctrination can be coupled with rapid militarisation. "Our chief concern is for the 41 percent of children who had been militarised," said Pattinson, adding that most of the young people who came back from Russia suffered from some form of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Children underwent military training in at least 39 of the sites identified by the HRL study. The young people learn how to handle various weapons and may receive very specific training, such as learning how to become a paratrooper. "They’ve been asked or forced to join paramilitary groups, shown how to throw a grenade, dig a trench, hold a gun or handle firearms, clear mines, and essentially trained to fight against their own country," Pattinson said.

Other children may be assigned the task of producing military equipment such as ammunition or drones, to be used by the Russian army on the front lines in Ukraine.

This massive program gives the impression of an almost industrial-scale Russification effort. It is accompanied by several decrees issued by the authorities to facilitate the adoption of these children by Russian families or their naturalisation as Russian citizens.

An example of 'demographic conquest'
“It's certainly a concerted, well-organised effort," said Andreas Umland, an analyst from the Swedish Institute of International Affairs and author of a 2024 report on Russian state-enforced displacement of Ukrainian children.

In Kherson, dozens of children deported to Russia
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Umland spoke of a “demographic conquest unfolding alongside the geographic one”. The Kremlin doesn't simply want to occupy Ukraine, it also wants to transform Ukrainian children into Russians, he explained.

This is meant to “counteract the problem of demographic decline that Russia already had before the large-scale war, which is only partly solved by immigration from Central Asia and the Caucasus”, said Umland, adding that Ukrainians, who are White, and Slavs, are seen by the Russian authorities as easy to assimilate.

In Moscow's view, there is nothing illegal about this operation even though "there are undeniably serious crimes being committed against Ukrainian children”, said Pattinson. In Russia’s interpretation, “there's no Ukrainian nation, and therefore these children are not actually transferred from one ethnic group into another ethnic group”, added Umland. In other words, these children cannot be "Russified"... because they are already Russian.

Umland said the indoctrination of children was reminiscent of the Soviet era, when children were “seen as units to be made to function in a totalitarian society [. . .] and the fate of the individual child was unimportant”. This same logic persists today, he added: “The higher goal used to be communism, now it’s the Russian Empire. It’s therefore the same utilitarian approach toward children."

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