Russia sets up reeducation camps for taken Ukrainian children, chilling report says
Mike Brest
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“All levels” of the Kremlin are aware of Russia’s armed forces deportations of Ukrainian children, according to a new report.
Millions of Ukrainian children have been displaced by the war, and thousands have been killed or wounded in the conflict, which is on the verge of reaching its one-year anniversary.
A new report from the Conflict Observatory, a program that the State Department supports, released an independent report on Tuesday detailing a vast network of Russian-run sites and processes used to relocate thousands of Ukrainian children to areas under Russian government control.
RUSSIA’S WAR TAKING A TOLL ON UKRAINIAN CHILDREN
In July 2022, Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Russia of having detained or deported between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainians through their “filtration camps,” including 260,000 children, while the new report from the Conflict Observatory released on Tuesday found that “at least 6,000 children from Ukraine aged four months to 17 years who have been held at camps and other facilities, more than 40 in total, since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine,” though it also said the number is likely much higher.
The Conflict Observatory’s report also shows that investigators uncovered 43 facilities that operate within this network, 12 are clustered around the Black Sea, seven are in occupied Crimea, and 10 are clustered around the cities of Moscow, Kazan, and Yekaterinburg. One of the camps is in Russia’s far east, approximately 3,900 miles from Ukraine’s border with Russia.
The investigators also found that “this operation is centrally coordinated by Russia’s federal government and involves every level of government.”
“Mounting evidence of Russia’s actions lays bare the Kremlin’s aims to deny and suppress Ukraine’s identity, history, and culture,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement about the investigators’ findings. “The devastating impacts of Putin’s war on Ukraine’s children will be felt for generations.”
A nonprofit group based in New Hampshire, Common Man for Ukraine, is working tirelessly to help Ukrainian children affected by the war. The group, which partners with the Rotary Club in Poland, raised more than $2 million in aid for those children and is hoping to reach $10 million in 2023.
Four of the co-founders of the group are heading back to Poland and Ukraine next week, where they will be on the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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“We know that there’s likely to be some increased aggression,” Susan Mathison, one of the founders, told the Washington Examiner. “There will be probably some increased pressure on the infrastructure of Ukraine in the form of electricity and heat. These are big concerns for us in winter for the kids we care about. And also, we want to make a statement that we’re continuing — we’re going to be there as long as you need us.”
To date, the money raised has gone to more than 700 tons of food, 10,000 sleeping bags, hundreds of generators, a bloodmobile, and more than $400,000 toward children’s mental health services.