Children kidnapped in Ukraine and those from occupied territories are turning up at Russian military-style training camps, with fears that some are already on the front lines.
Last summer, Sonya, then 17, had endured two very difficult years under Russian occupation in the Kherson Region of southern Ukraine. Her foster mother agreed that she needed a break. Growing up under forced assimilation had been terrifying, Sonya says, and her school had offered to take her to a camp in Crimea, a peninsula once known as a popular tourist destination under the Soviet Union.
But it was only after she left that she realized she was being sent to Volgograd, a city over 1000 kilometers away in southwestern Russia. Far from being a resort, the city is home to one of Russia’s largest military-style training camps, where Ukrainian and Russian children are trained.
Sonya spent a month at the Avangard camp, which has branches across Russia and was sanctioned by the UK in November for its role in the forced deportation and brainwashing of Ukrainian children. Sonya describes how she and other children were put through a programme of activities that included learning to dig trenches and rig them with booby traps and wire, then loading machine guns, taking part in military formations. She also carried other children on her back to simulate medical evacuations.
Similar to Soviet-era youth camps, these centers have grown in number since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Critics say they are used to indoctrinate children and prepare them for future service in the Russian military.
Large numbers of children from occupied Regions of Ukraine are reportedly being sent along with young Russians. The Kremlin portrays these facilities as opportunities for physical and cultural learning for the children.
“The instructors told me that with the certificate they give me after the training, I can join the Russian army, so I realized that it was not just a game. I was very worried, because I knew that I would soon turn 18 and I might be forced to register,” said Sonya. After more than three years of war, thousands of Ukrainian children remain in Russia after being forcibly sent there, while another 1.6 million are growing up under occupation, according to a report by GlobSec, a think tank based in Bratislava.
NATURALIZATION OF UKRAINIAN CHILDREN
Concerns have grown that children are being recruited to fight, with some thought to be already on the front lines. “Forced recruitment of foreign nationals is prohibited under international law, regardless of age, but Russia is naturalizing these children as citizens to create legal cover,” says Nathaniel Raymond, director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale University, which documents civilian casualties and human rights abuses across Ukraine.
The goal, Raymond says, is to “erase Ukrainian identity and make children Russian.” “Russia has been using versions of this since 2014, escalating them after the full-scale invasion,” Raymond said.
Sonya and her family had to obtain Russian passports and other documents, and at school she had to study according to the Russian curriculum and language. Her younger brother was also sent to an Avangard camp, where she says he fell victim to indoctrination.
“After succumbing to their propaganda, he sided with Russia. He says he’s going to join the Russian army. He talks about it with his friends,” says Sonya.
Researchers at Yale have identified more than 100 camps, some military, others focused on indoctrination, and many a combination. They are age- and gender-specific, and the researchers have also tracked military training sessions and shooting ranges using satellite imagery.
During their stay in the camps, the children say they listen to speeches by well-known propagandists and other figures involved in the invasion of Ukraine. They learn to use or assemble drones and watch films about World War II. Footage posted online from the camps shows children in military-style clothing displaying the Russian flag and carrying red armbands.
Camp rules, which have been circulating on social media, suggest that children are forbidden from speaking “foreign” languages, such as Ukrainian, and from wearing the yellow and blue colors of the Ukrainian flag. Contact with family is often limited.
PUNISH
Sonya says staff at her camp punished Ukrainian boys for disobedience, ordering them to strip to their underwear and perform intense physical exercises. She says they also often use a derogatory Russian term for Ukrainians. Russia’s network of “military-patriotic” camps fits into a broader pattern of militarization, observers say, in which the state runs an increasing number of programs to prepare children for service, teaching them to wear flak jackets or design and test drones.
Ukrainian children in the occupied territories are often given little choice about participation, says Megan Gittoes, of the think tank GlobSec, where conditions in the camps are often abusive — physically, mentally and psychologically. Gittoes says she has documented cases where boys are forced to box each other or endure beatings. “Children are forced to participate in the programs or their parents risk losing custody. It’s downright coercive. Ukrainian children face more severe indoctrination because their identities have to be hidden. The goal is to instill fear, dependence on the state and loyalty to Russia,” she says.
Gittoes says it’s difficult to estimate how many children have enlisted in the Russian military. While there is a register of children who have fought for Russia and died since 2014, she says it’s harder to track what has happened since the start of the full-scale occupation, as the occupied areas are isolated and inaccessible.
“We know that boys in Zaporizhzhia (a Region partially occupied and claimed by Russia) have been told to hand over their passports for conscription. We have confirmed the conscription notices that have been sent,” says Gittoes, who has also seen evidence of voluntary registrations. “These people were Ukrainians and now see themselves as Russians. They are just proof that the Russian policy of indoctrination is working.” Mykola Kuleba, head of the Save Ukraine charity, which helps rescue Ukrainian children, says they have been turning back an increasing number of young men who have received conscription notices.
In one case, they helped a teenager from Kherson return after he had served a year in the Russian Army. He had been taken to Russia by his family, who were sympathizers of Moscow. He did not share their views, but when the call for conscription was sent to him, he feared he would be arrested if he did not go. He later managed to escape to an area of Ukraine not occupied by Russia.
Kiev insists that the return of the abducted children is non-negotiable in any peace talks, but Moscow denies mass abductions and has dismissed the issue, offering to return only a few of them. After her time in the military camp, Sonya – now 18 – returned to her foster family in an occupied part of Kherson. Fearing that she would be forced back to the camp, she managed to escape earlier this year with the help of Save Ukraine in Kiev. Her brother has remained in Kherson. (The Guardian)