A new report published by Yale University researchers as part of a joint effort with the United States Department of State reveals the extent of Russia’s deportation program that has seen thousands of children illegally trafficked out of Ukraine and into Russia.
(Subscribe to 19FortyFive‘s New YouTube Channel here.)
The report, titled “Russia’s Systematic Program for the Re-Education and Adoption of Ukrainian Children,” outlines how Russia used a series of holding facilities established from Siberia to the Black Sea coast to collect huge numbers of Ukrainian children and find new homes for them in Russia.
The project is by no means a secret and Russian propagandists have repeatedly defended the efforts on Russian state television.
The scale of the kidnapping outlined in the report reveals just how far Russia is willing to go, not just to win the war in Ukraine but to create a new generation of young Russians sympathetic to the politics of the Kremlin.
How Many Children Were Taken?
According to the researchers at Yale, at least 6,000 Ukrainian children have been detained in these holding facilities by agents working for the Russian government. The same researchers, however, warned that thousands more children may be unaccounted for.
Researchers say that at least 43 camps exist, with eleven such camps located over 500 miles away from the border between Russia and Ukraine.
The ages of the children being moved from Ukraine to Russia range from just a couple of years old to teenagers, meaning many of the children taken from their families are perfectly aware of what is happening to them.
The children are then either sent to summer camps, where they are taught to become Russians, or sent to be adopted by Russian families.
“In some cases there is adoption, other cases summer camp programs where the kids were slated to return home and never did,” Nathaniel Raymond, the executive director of Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab said.
The scale of the project means that Russia is literally incapable of hiding what’s happening, meaning instead that the Kremlin has loudly defended the program as a “humanitarian” effort.
This week’s report offers a look at the scale of the project, but Ukrainians believe that significantly more children have been taken.
In December, Nikolay Kuleba, the commissioner for children’s rights working under the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said that Russia had deported more than 13,000 children throughout the war.
Kuleba said that Russians are “kidnapping Ukrainian children” and that families willing to take the children in are paid $300 per year per child, and $2,000 per year for children who have disabilities.
BONUS: The Fall of Joe Biden Has Started
BONUS: Donald Trump Looks At His End
BONUS: Kamala Harris Should Quit
Jack Buckby is 19FortyFive’s Breaking News Editor. He is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
