In Russia, there is a network of institutions that "re-educate" Ukrainian children taken out of the country. This is stated in the investigation of the Conflict Observatory project, which operates at the Yale University Health Institute, USA. At least 6,000 children passed through these institutions, most of which were created on the basis of recreation camps.
“The main function of the camps seems to be political re-education,” the report says. In at least 32 of these institutions, the researchers found signs of systematic work to turn children away from the Ukrainian cultural code and instil pro-Russian ideas in them. In some institutions, children also received military training.
In total, the researchers counted 43 such institutions, most of them are located in the annexed Crimea. Similar camps were found near Moscow, Yekaterinburg and Kazan, as well as in Siberia and the Far East. There are children aged from four months to 17 years who are subjected to indoctrination. It is noted that in these camps are not only orphans, but also those who have parents. Some of them told the researchers that they were forced to let their children go there. Other parents complain that children continue to be kept in the camps even though the agreed period of their stay there has already expired.
The authors of the study point out that such practices violate the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
In January, Ukraine's presidential commissioner for children's rights, Daria Gerasimchuk, reported that during the war, about 14,000 Ukrainian children were taken to Russia, and only 125 of them were returned to their homeland.