Russia Expands Reeducation of Deported Ukrainian Children: Yale Report

Russia is holding Ukrainian children at more than 210 sites where they are being subjected to military training, forced reeducation, and involvement in drone manufacturing, according to a report released on Sept. 16.

Yale’s School of Public Health says it has identified more than 150 new locations since it published similar findings last year.

The research, undertaken by Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL), used open-source information and “very high resolution” satellite imagery to identify the locations where children are being held, which include summer camps, health resorts, cadet schools, medical facilities, universities, schools, orphanages, a military base, and a monastery.

These centers are dotted over a vast area of land stretching more than 3,500 miles from the Black Sea to the Pacific Ocean, according to the report.

According to the HRL, this “represents the highest number of locations to which children from Ukraine have been taken that has been published to date.”

“The actual number is likely higher,” the report states, “as there are multiple sites still under investigation by HRL and additional locations may exist that have not yet been identified.”

According to Ukrainian authorities, Moscow has deported, or forcibly displaced, more than 19,500 children to Russian and Belarusian territory in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Yale put that figure at more than 35,000 in June, when it issued an appeal for funding after President Donald Trump withdrew federal money from the HRL, amid other cuts in federal funding to universities.

“Russia is operating a potentially unprecedented system of large-scale re-education, military training, and dormitory facilities capable of holding tens of thousands of children from Ukraine for long periods of time,” the latest HRL report states.

Ukrainian children engaged in military training while held in at least 39 of the locations, with a minimum of 34 of these facilities newly identified in the most recent report, the HRL report stated.

Children aged 8 to 18 were taken to camps and a military base where they underwent this training, which comprised combat training, ceremonial parades and drills, drone assembly, and military history classes.

Shooting and grenade-throwing competitions, tactical medicine, drone control, and tactics training were also imposed, including one instance of youngsters from Donetsk Oblast undergoing what was described as “airborne training,” according to the report.

“In this instance, the children were brought to the base on an aircraft managed by the Presidential Property Management Department within the Russian Presidential Administration,” the report states.

The HRL has previously tracked 314 Ukrainian children to Kremlin-run websites, where they were put up for adoption to ethnic Russian families.

The findings in the report reinforce allegations made in arrest warrants issued in 2023 by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, The Netherlands, for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, accusing them of unlawful deportation of children, which is viewed as a war crime.

Speaking to the state-run TASS news agency at the time, the Kremlin described the allegations as “outrageous and unacceptable,” and said the warrants are “null and void” as Russia does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC.

Some 1,605 deported children have returned to Ukraine as of this month, according to Bring Kids Back UA, a strategic action plan initiated by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which oversees efforts to return forcefully deported children.

Russia denies it is taking children against their will and says it has been evacuating people voluntarily to remove them from the war zone.

“If you ask me how many children have been abducted, I will answer you truthfully—not a single one,” Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky said, according to a TASS report in June, citing an interview with Rossiya-24.

“Children were saved by our soldiers amid shelling attacks, risking their lives. Now, our social workers are engaged in returning them to their families.”

The Kremlin has not yet issued a statement in relation to the latest Yale report.

The Epoch Times contacted the Russian government for comment but did not hear back by publication time.