New Report Details Russia’s ‘Systematic Re-education’ of Ukrainian Children in at Least 32 Camps

Nearly a year into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, more than 6,000 children — likely a significantly underreported figure — have been taken into a system of children’s “re-education” camps across Russia and occupied Crimea, according to a report released today by Yale University and the State Department.

The system includes at least 43 distinct facilities from the Crimean peninsula to a location near Russia’s Pacific coast — a spot, the report notes, that is three times closer to the continental U.S. than it is to Ukraine.

In at least 32 of those camps, the Russian authorities are likely carrying out “systematic re-education” efforts to promote a pro-Russia worldview. The report notes: “There is no documentation of child mistreatment, including sexual or physical violence, among the camps referenced in this report,” and many of the children have been released back to their parents.

Yet many of the children were taken involuntarily from their parents in the first place, and still others have remained in the camp system, about which much remains unknown.

The findings came today in a new study released by the Yale University Humanitarian Research Lab, via the Conflict Observatory, a State Department-run research consortium. The report is based on open-source data that spans social-media posts, government documents, and news reports, as well as various sources of photographs.

“These facilities appear to serve a range of purposes, including what Yale HRL terms ‘re-education,’ an effort to ostensibly make children more pro-Russia in their personal and political views,” the report concludes.

Since the outset of the war, Russia has operated a sophisticated and brutal filtration system, in which captured Ukrainians are sorted according to their level of threat to invading Russian forces. Some people who went through the filtration process alleged that Russian troops engaged in torture and murder, particularly targeting detainees suspected of having ties to the Ukrainian military and government.

In July, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that an estimated 900,000 to 1.6 million Ukrainians had been deported from Ukraine.

Today’s report, though it states that it almost certainly undercounts the number of children in the children’s-camp system, is a significant effort to sketch out the contours of Moscow’s effort to erase Ukraine as a distinct national entity.

Beyond the 6,000 children held by Russia documented by today’s report, other estimates vary. The Russian government has itself claimed to have taken in over 700,000 children since the outset of the invasion, while Washington has estimated that 260,000 children have been taken from Ukraine to Russia.

According to the report, Ukrainian children are placed in the Russian camps for a number of reasons described by the Russian authorities, including evacuation from conflict, attendance of normal children’s “recreational” camps, medical concerns, and adoption.

The report also notes that the experiences of Ukrainian children have varied: Some were released from the camps back to their parents, others were sent to the Russian adoption system, while others were subject to unexplained delays in their return to their parents. The report includes the findings from interviews with parents whose children were held and moved without explanation:

Another mother sent her daughter to Medvezhonok because she has a chronic illness and seizures and wanted her to have a rest. Once her daughter’s return was suspended, she got the phone number for the camp director through her daughter, and the director told the mother her daughter would not be returned to Ukraine. Other parents read about the suspended return from Medvezhonok in the news or guessed what had happened but were seemingly never directly informed or provided consent to the indefinite hold. Another mother from Kherson oblast went to retrieve her daughter from a camp in Russia-occupied Crimea only to find out her child had been moved to the Republic of Adygea and she had not been informed.

The reeducation component in many of the camps comes through an academic curriculum designed by Russia’s federal authorities, including “pro-Russia patriotic and military-related education,” according to the report.

In a statement announcing the release of the study today, the State Department said the unlawful deportation of children is a “grave breach” of the Fourth Geneva Convention. “Russia must immediately halt forced transfers and deportations and return the children to their families or legal guardians. Russia must provide registration lists of Ukraine’s relocated and deported children and grant access for outside independent observers to related facilities within Russia-occupied areas of Ukraine and inside Russia itself,” the statement added.