Ukraine.- Russia placed thousands of Ukrainian children in camps where they are subjected to Russian propaganda and forced adoption by Russian families, and some even receive military training, according to a US government-backed Yale University report.
According to researchers at the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Laboratory, the campaign violates the Geneva Conventions and could amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly genocide. It has affected children between the ages of four months and 17 years.
The investigation was supported by the State Department’s Office of Conflict Stabilization Operations.
Although it has been possible to confirm the participation of at least 6,000 children in the camps, researchers “believe that the number is probably significantly higher,” Nathaniel Raymond, a Yale researcher who worked on the report, told reporters at a briefing. phone call held on Tuesday. “The main objective of the camps seems to be political re-education.”
In many of the cases, according to the report, the children were sent to the camps from occupied areas of Ukraine such as Zaporizhzhia, Kharkov, Kherson, Donetsk and Lugansk. In two military-style camps in Chechnya and Russian-occupied Crimea, children were taught to “handle military equipment, drive trucks and study firearms,” according to the researchers.
Some Ukrainian orphans were eventually adopted or placed with Russian foster families, but the report notes that not all of these children were technically orphans, as some simply came from families “in difficult circumstances.”
Russia has presented its adoption program as humanitarian aid for abandoned children.
According to the researchers, many parents gave their consent under duress for their children to be taken, as some wanted to get their loved ones out of a war zone or to feed them properly. Some children were returned to their parents, but others were unable to contact them or prevented from returning home.
