Russia Has Started Involving Children Abducted In Ukraine In Drone Assembly
2- 16.09.2025, 14:41
- 5,412
In Germany, they found out the details.
Russia is using 210 facilities, including those belonging to the Presidential Affairs Directorate, to kidnap, deport, re-educate and forcibly adopt tens of thousands of Ukrainian children. In one case, children who passed through the Smena All-Russian Children's Center in the Krasnodar region were forced to participate in the assembly of drones and other military equipment, experts at Yale University's Humanitarian Research Laboratory found.
Since 2022, more than 300 children from Ukraine's Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions have passed through Smena, according to the lab's report (cited by The Telegraph). The camp has at least six programs for children from Russia and from Ukraine's occupied territories, some of them run by the Unarmia. In April 2024, it organized an "innovation and technology camp" in which children were involved in producing weapons that are being used in the war against Ukraine. Among them was at least one group of children from the Luhansk region who, along with drones, assembled mine detectors, robots and fast-charging devices for assault rifles, the report said.
Yunarmia programs at Shmena traditionally also include formation training, firearms training and medical care. Ukrainian children also receive re-education and military training at the "Young Patriot" center near Moscow, which opened in July 2023.
This and two other centers belonging to the Presidential Administration, as well as a military base, are among a group of 210 facilities involved in the removal and re-education of Ukrainian children, researchers at Yale University (which is declared an "undesirable organization" in Russia) have found. Approximately 40 of them implement activities to indoctrinate children for military purposes. They are taught a Russian version of the history of their homeland, primary military training, etc.
Russian and their appointed authorities in the occupied territories sometimes do not even hide these activities. In January, Denis Miroshnichenko, secretary of the Lugansk regional branch of the United Russia party and chairman of the People's Council of the "LNR" Denis Miroshnichenko guided the first group of children to the "Young Patriot" center this year. "Within the framework of cooperation with the Office of the President of the Russian Federation and signed agreements with health camps today the next group of children went to the military-sports center "Young Patriot". I am glad that from year to year we are improving the health of more and more young residents of the republic", - cited the words of Miroshnichenko on the website of "United Russia" in "LNR".
"The center was opened specifically for recuperation of children from the LNR and DNR and works all year round. During the current visit "Young Patriot" will be visited by 51 children. In total during the year it is planned to improve the health of more than five hundred children," the report says. - In addition to recuperation, the program includes activities on patriotic education, as well as excursions to historically significant memorial complexes of Moscow and the Moscow region".
"Patriotic education" includes division into "platoons", wearing tactical equipment, protective gear and weapons, the authors of the report write with reference to photos of children who arrived at the "Young Patriot" in July 2025.
Last week, several senators from both parties in the US Congress drafted a bill to put Russia and Belarus on the list of state sponsors of terrorism unless they return more than 19,000 children abducted from Ukraine. "Getting on that list is not easy. Well, let me say that Russia has earned the right to be on it," said Republican Lindsey Graham. - What is the right response [to the abduction of Ukrainian children]? Do something about it. Get us, the world, off our ass and make it unacceptable."
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