Russia expands forced re-education of deported Ukrainian children, US research shows

By Anthony Deutsch and Tom Balmforth

RIVNE, Ukraine/LONDON (Reuters) -U.S.-funded research has identified more than 210 sites where Ukrainian children have been taken for military training, drone manufacturing and other forced re-education by Russia, as part of a large-scale deportation programme.

Yale's School of Public Health said in a report published on Tuesday that more than 150 new locations had been discovered since it published findings last year, when it alleged that Russian presidential aircraft had been used to transport children.

The latest research by Yale's Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL), based on open-source information and satellite imagery, said roughly half of the locations are managed by the Russian government.

It "represents the highest number of locations to which children from Ukraine have been taken that has been published to date," the report said. "The actual number is likely higher, as there are multiple sites still under investigation by HRL and additional locations may exist that have not yet been identified."

Ukraine says Russia has illegally deported or forcibly displaced more than 19,500 children to Russia and Belarus in violation of the Geneva Conventions. In June, Yale estimated that figure could be closer to 35,000.

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

The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest report.

Yale researchers "can conclude that 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 report said. 

Yale's programme, which has been defunded by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, had previously tracked 314 Ukrainian children to Russian-government websites, where they were put up for adoption by Russian families.

The number of Ukrainian children taken and the network of facilities where they are being held has jumped since Yale first published findings in 2023, when it estimated 6,000 children had been taken to 43 camps.

The findings underpinned arrest warrants issued in 2023 by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova, accusing them of unlawful deportation of children, a war crime. 

"The good news is we now know the scope of what we're dealing with fully," Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab, told Reuters. "The bad news is that addressing it, bringing these kids home, depends on absolute total global unity."

Yale says that since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ukrainian children have been taken to locations spread across 3,500 miles (5,600 km), including cadet schools, a military base, medical facilities, a religious site, secondary schools and universities, orphanages and most frequently, camps and sanatoriums. 

Military training of Ukrainian children took place at at least 39 locations and at least 34 of these facilities are newly identified, it said. 

Ukrainian children aged eight to 18 were taken to camps and a military base where they underwent militarization programs, including combat training, ceremonial parades and drills, assembly of drones and other materiel, and education in military history. 

They also did shooting competitions, grenade throwing competitions, tactical medicine, drone control and tactics training. 

In one case Yale detailed children from the Donetsk region receiving "airborne training" at a military base. They were brought to the base on an aircraft managed by the Presidential Property Management Department within the Russian Presidential Administration, it said.

Over 1,600 deported children have returned, Ukraine's commissioner for human rights said this month. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, wrote on Telegram on Monday that 16 more children had been brought home after spending "years of being under pressure under Russian occupation, in fear and humiliation".

(Reporting by Anthony Deutsch in Amsterdam and Tom Balmforth in London; editing by Rosalba O'Brien)