At least 6,000 of Ukrainian children have been taken to camps and other facilities in Russia and Russian-occupied territory, prevented from communicating with their families and subjected to pro-Russian re-education, according to a report from the Conflict Observatory, a research group that monitors alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine.
The children, who range in age from four months to 17 years, have in some cases been forced to attend classes on Russian culture and patriotism as part of "integration programs," said the observatory, which is independent but, as part of the Yale School of Public Health's Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL), receives support from the U.S. State Department. Moscow claims some, but not all of the children taken into Russian custody since the start of the war almost a year ago were orphans.
"The total number of children is not known and is likely significantly higher than 6,000," the report says.
"In many cases, Russia purported to temporarily evacuate children in Ukraine under the guise of a free summer camp, only to later refuse to return the children and to cut off all contacts with their families," State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Tuesday. "Putin seeks to rob Ukraine of its future by taking its children."
According to the report, there is a network of at least 43 facilities, including camps and other locations, being used to house Ukrainian children, both in Russia and in Ukraine's Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula. The observatory said some of the sites were almost 4,000 miles from Russia's western border with Ukraine.
At least 78% of the camps are putting the Ukrainian children through Russian patriotism programs, which the authors of the report say have "the apparent goal of integrating children from Ukraine into the Russian government's vision of national culture, history, and society."
