Reportedly, Russia is operating, if not more, at least 43 camps in order to re-educate hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children, a study found. The report has found that children who are as young as even 4 months old, not even years, have been taken to this camp. This entire operation is being coordinated by Russia’s federal government, according to a study. Russia has put more than 6,000 Ukrainian children in “re-education” camps in what could constitute a war crime, according to a study published this Tuesday.
The State Department-funded study, published by the Conflict Observatory, found a truly chilling and gruesome details that children as young as even four-months-old have been taken to 43 camps across Russia since the start of the war nearly a year ago, when the war actually started with full force. In some of these camps, children were also wholly trained how to handle military equipment, drive trucks, and shoot firearms, the report said. There is no evidence howsoever that they are being sent to fight on the front lines.
Some of these camps are clustered around the Black Sea, while the others are close to major cities including Moscow and Kazan. Eleven camps are located around 500 miles from Ukraine’s border which is spine chilling and odd at the same time.
To imagine kids who were just born, learning how to do things in the first place, as mortifying as this, is unparalleled. The camps are “centrally coordinated by Russia’s federal government”, the report said and they aim to “expose children from Ukraine to Russia-centric academic, cultural, patriotic, and/or military education,” the report said.
“The systematic pro-Russia education of Ukraine’s children takes many forms, including school curriculum, field trips to cultural or patriotic sites throughout the country, lectures from Russia’s veterans and historians, and military activities,” it added. The report has evidently found that many children are forcibly being taken to camps after they’ve been orphaned, or evacuated from the front. Some children were sent to “recreational camps” and the name was given based on their understanding of it, with a complete agreement of their parent but to their dismay, have not returned, the report said.
“In many cases, Russia purported to temporarily evacuate children from Ukraine under the guise of a free summer camp, only to later refuse to return the children and to cut off all contact with their families,” it added. Russia has denied very promptly, all the previous allegations of such camps, telling NBC News in a statement last year that the claims were “groundless and are conjectures aimed at discrediting Russia.” Nathaniel Raymond, a Yale researcher, told reporters on Tuesday that the study should be seen as a “gigantic Amber alert” — in reference to public notices of child abductions.
