Russia offers Ukrainian military training for children: Yale research: NPR

Kyiv, Ukraine – A new report by researchers from the University of Yale has revealed evidence that the vast network of Russia sites where thousands of Ukrainian children are re -educated are more important than the investigators have previously estimated it, and seems to include military training in cadet academies and schools for children as young as 8 years.

The report of the Humanitarian Research Lab of the Yale School of Public Health, entitled “Ukraine’s Stolen Children: Inside Russia’s Network of Re-Education and Militarization”, examines what happens to thousands of Ukrainian children from occupied areas, in particular since the February 2022 Invasion of Russia.

Investigators say they have documented an extended system where Russia regularly strips Ukrainian children from their cultural identity and teaches them Russian patriotic accounts and even combat skills.

“They give them real training in the launch of the grenade and, in a case, we know that they are involved in the manufacture of drones,” said Nathaniel Raymond, director of the laboratory, in an interview with NPR.

The Russian authorities “do not take them to the Paratrooper jump school to make them cops of the shopping center in Cinnabon in Rostov-on-Don,” said Raymond, referring to a large regional city in southern Russia.

“They are in a training pipeline that has tactical scenarios and programs that lead to a single conclusion.”

The report documented 210 locations – 156 of them newly identified – through Russia and occupied Ukraine where Ukrainian children aged 8 to 17 were taken. Investigators found proof of rehabilitation in 62% of sites and 19% military training.

The study also indicates that there are signs that around a quarter of the installations have been widened since the large -scale invasion of Russia in 2022. The network extends to more than 3,500 miles from the Black Sea in Siberia and includes two new cadet schools and even a monastery. The report alleys that around half of the locations are directly managed by the Russian federal or local authorities.

Investigators used tools, including open source information and high -resolution satellite images to identify sites and specificities such as shooting ranges and trenches.

We still do not know how many Ukrainian children are in this network. The Ukrainian government said it has checked that at least 19,500 children have been missing since 2022, while Yale’s humanitarian research laboratory estimates that the number could reach 35,000.

Raymond said that he had heard several European officials who are “horrified” by the report and said it could be a “turning point because, for Europe, it shows in relief how a system is and that it is Ukraine now, but it could be other countries afterwards.”

Ukraine insists that the return of children must be part of any peace agreement with Russia. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court published arrest mandates against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, for the alleged illegal deportation of Ukrainian children in Russia, qualifying him as a war crime.

Russia does not recognize the ICC and does not reject the accusations. The Russian government has not commented on the latest research from the Yale Lab. But in response to the previous accusations, the Russian authorities said they saved children from the front line, not removing them, and insisted that the number of children transferred to Russia was swollen.

Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that he planned to organize a “high-level event” linked to Ukrainian children who disappeared in Russia at the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly later this month.

Meanwhile, Yale’s humanitarian research laboratory faces an uncertain future after the Trump administration has canceled the conflict observatory, a program funded by the State Department which documents proof of war crimes in Ukraine and Sudan. The Lab Yale was part of this program. His work has now been extended until January after a wave of small private donations from groups such as evangelical organizations and the Ukrainian diaspora.